Malawi

   While my road trip to Zanzibar technically started when I left Chitima and crashed two nights up at the Tete cabin that is Alejandra's house in Angonia. Complete with her friendly dogs to pet and a climate that makes me forget I live in Mozambique's hottest province. I feel like the real journey began when I got that exit stamp from Mozambique and crossed the quarter mile no-man's land that separates Moz and Malawi.

                           

(Clothes and gear for the boat)

    I was not expecting much difference from one side to the other, and is sort of what I got.  The customs and immigration building looked a similar brick and mortar with cement spackled walls and a tin metal roof. The road leading to and from was a compact dirt that the falling rain had created washed in grooves.  But when I walked up to the immigrations desk to apply for a visa the pleasant reminder that Malawi's official language is English presented itself.  Being able to breeze through the application and answer all of the officers' questions was quite comforting and added a small buy of confidence to my already anxious conscious about making this trip.  After a few short inquiries to my travel plans and some small banter with the officials in the office, I had my 7 day travel visa for Malawi and was legally in a new country.

                               

    With rain coming down pretty steadily I began the South to North journey through Malawi.  Taking a taxi from the border to the nearest town of Dedza I caught a ride in an all but too familiar chappa to make my way to the capital city, Lilongwe.  After about two hours I landed in the capital amongst a wall to wall packed parking area for public transport chappas and buses.  Wrestling my bag out of the chappa I was bombarded with guys trying to usher me into their taxi or rickshaw. Fending off the best of them I got enough breathing room to wander away and start looking for my next transportation, the Taqwa bus, to take me across the border to Tanzania.  After a few simple directions from some locals I sort of stumbled on the Taqwa hub while buying some street meat for lunch. The office, filled with a couple of good fellas drinking soda and watching a futbol match assured me that I was in the right place and that I could buy my ticket for the next day, Sunday.  I asked when was the earliest bus leaving and they said 7, without looking away from the TV.  I counted em out the cash and they wrote me a ticket for the next day, transport for the next step secured.

                               

   I spent the rest of the day locking down my lodging, a hostel referred to me by another PCV, and exploring the local market and all the nooks and alleys we PCVs love finding ourselves lost in.  Around dinner time I found myself down yet another one of these side streets looking for some place to grub but unable to see an established eatery close by.  I settled on a bar with two guys grilling beef and serving fries outside. With a Carlsberg beer in hand I sat and ate what was probably the best $2 steak I'd ever had with a side of fries.

                           

    Back at the hostel I turned in early after a quick bucket bath in a tub and hoping to get some decent sleep before trying to show up early for my bus.  A few hours later to the sound of a 5am alarm I was out the door by 5:30 and at the bus office by 6:15.  Feeling pretty satisfied with myself I sat there eating some bolo as two other buses from the same busline rolled in from Tanz and started unloading.  Waiting patiently I struck up a conversation with one of the drivers, I asked when the bus to leave would start loading as we were approaching 7.  He have me a goofy look and said it's not leaving until 7, to which I said yes and checked my watch. He than said no 7pm.... Turns out Malawi used 12hr clocks unlike Moz on military time which I've been running on for a year now.  -_-

   So with 12 hours to kill I headed back onto the streets on Lilongwe. I spent next 5 hours at a little cafe I found, surprising the workers opening up shop to order a coke to try and wake me up. Only to fall asleep on the patio table for two hours waking up to order another coke and wait for lunch to start turning out. Luckily they had some pretty delicious chicken curry with some heat that brought me right back to life.  With 7 more hours to spare I tried wandering around more of Lilongwe, but unlike some other capitals I've been in it is very spread out. So I just meandered back to the area of the Taqwa to find a place that has my favorite time passing hobie in Africa, billiards.

   Playing a couple games breaking even on the W/L I retired to a table to just wait out my remaining 4 hours watching soccer highlights.  A carlsberg down and a bit later a friendly fellow came up and joined me. Striking up a simple conversation, we started to really hit it off. His name was Lastone, he was a smaller fellow with a big grin and a pleasant personality and much more mannered than some of the other men who were quite tipsy already for a Sunday afternoon.  Shortly we were joined by two other fellows looking to have a better conversation than what the rest of the bar crowd was carrying on.  So the four of us sat for the next few hours and really shot the breeze.  Their company was very enjoyable and even though we were each heading in different directions, me to Tanz and them to South Africa, we swapped numbers and parted ways feeling better we had met the other.  And with another $2 street steak dinner and up beat attitude I finally hopped on that 7 o'clock Taqwa bus to head to Mbeya Tanzania.

                         

Thank you

    I'm currently sitting at a side street cafe in Lilongwe Malawi having a coke and watching the locals dodge the morning shower as I wait to catch my bus this afternoon.   Trying to think of an elegant and thoughtful way to say thank you to all of you awesome people you supported this trip and made it possible. Whether you donated, shared and spread the word, or just sent good vibes I'm very thankful and appreciate it all immensely. 

    What has been even more gratifying than raising the funds to do this sailing race. Is the fact that I've been lucky enough to have met and befriended so many awesome, interesting, and adventurous people over my life so far.  Seriously, you all rock and have each in your own way made an impact on my life and become a better person from knowing ya.  So please give yourself a pat on the back and accept my Biggest THANK YOU for helping me take this adventure on.  Really hope one day in the future we can get together and talk of some of the stories I'm looking to make on this trip. 

I appreciate the love. 

-Cole

Health volunteer for a day

   Dust churning underneath the wheels of our 4x4 truck as I stood holding onto the bar behind the truck cabin dodging each overhanging branch as it came rushing toward my head winding our way down the 11km dirt road to the mato farming village.  Nhandoa was our destination for the afternoon, about 45 min from my town.  As we made our way passing mães who’d moved off to the bank of the tail with food goods and water balancing on their heads as our driver laid on the horn to warn them and possible others that he was coming.  As we came through the dried shrubbery into some clearage that showed a scattering of mud houses with grass roofs and not a power line in sight, the picture became quite clear and this was more what I’d imagined about the places working in PC would take me.

   Two Fridays ago I got my site mate, a health Volunteer, to let me tag along with her and other hospital staff to do their next "Brigada Mobile" at a village outside of Chitima but within our district.  Didn't take much convincing as the hospital staff were more than happy to let another PVC join on their regular duties.  Even as non shalant as they made it seem I was quite excited to be getting out into another part of my district. As and education Volunteer we are pretty much confined to the school and our immediate surroundings. Sure I'd been to other villages down the road past my town but never more than a stop to pick something or someone up. To which I would often forget the village name before I was even out of it.  Abby my site mate though, talked each week of her trips to different barrios (neighborhoods) in Chitima and surrounding villages to do monthly check ups, give PSAs, health demos, and do mobile consulting out there for people who couldn't make it into town.  Which for me and the fact that I didn't even know what barrio I lived in, I thought it was just the "school barrio," had been quite jealous that 4 months in Chitima and she already had a better lay of the land and surround area than I.  To which she sometimes made fun of me, deservingly. So with school winding down I needed to start learning more about area around my bubble of a life in the Vale barrio, the school’s actually neighborhood name.

 

   As we pulled up in the truck to the massive Baobab tree in the center of Nhandoa carrying vaccines, vitamins, and documents to set up a mobile baby and maternity check-up station, the shaded area below the tree was packed with mães and all their kids all waiting for us. The health centers coordinate with local leaders to help set up and get word out about days like today. So without an email chain or message board crowds of anxious babies and mothers waited for their bi-monthly check up and vitamin resupply.  As best we could we created a baby weighing, vaccine, and early-mother station.  With some rickety desks from the towns near by primary school, one enclosed building, a sturdy branch and portable scale we were in business.  

            There wasn’t much for me to do as I couldn’t administer vaccines or speak nhungwe, so I assisted the baby weigh in as best I could.  Moms with their babies tied to their backs with a capulana cloth would each come up to the scale, put their babies in the harness to be weighed, and hand the nurse a yellow pamphlet.  Each mother carried one of these yellow pamphlets.  They were the entire medical records for their children, literally the only copy of the medical history that existed for their child’s growth, vaccines, and past consultations.  They are kept with the families and must be brought to every one of these mobile check-ups or any other type of medical situation.  Which made the hassle of getting my medical stuff in order before PC seem like a breeze compared to their responsibility with these cards.  After weighing each baby I distributed vitamin packs to each mother with a baby over 6 months old.  These weren’t Flintstone or princess gummies but packets that are mixed in with soft food for the kids daily.  Although, mini bags of Cheetos were the only think I could think about while handing them out.  

 

 

            After we had finished all the weighing, consultations, and vaccines we were treated to a modest meal of xima (thick grits), beans, and rehydrated salted fish as a small thank you from the towns’ people for making the trip out to them.  While we ate the food and I took notice to my very sun burnt skin, the older kids who had been playing in the area came up and began to take stock in the trash of vaccine bottles and syringe caps, no actual syringes as we had a bio-waste container. Making long wands out of connecting caps together and stacking empty mini vials up on each other they were 10x more entertained than they had been while waiting around for us to finish.  Packing up the truck we all piled back in and made our drive out of the mato and 45 min journey back to Chitima, leaving Nhandoa with some more knowledge of my surrounding area and a better appreciation for the health and hospital workers in this country.

(Cute little fat baby reminding of my own self, on the right) 

The Mango Tree Voyage

                As my first school year here in Mozambique is winding down I am wrapping up lessons, grades, and making notes for next year’s lesson plans and possible projects I hope to accomplish.  My life here is about to slow way down as the school and much of my town will clear out for the two month summer break.  I hadn’t put too much thought into it or made any specific plans for my time off aside from probably winging a little trip to northern Moz.  However, about a month ago a good buddy from my sailing circle approached me with this crazy sailing race he had found in Tanzania.  And, as it happens, it lines up perfectly for me and the free time my school break would permit me.  The idea went dormant for a while because of some possible scheduling conflicts and some slow response from the race coordinators, but just within the last week things have begun to line up. It’s made this a real possibility and it has me up at night with the idea racing through my mind.

                It’s called the Ngalawa Cup.  It’s basically a 500km sailing race through the Bay of Zanzibar, going from island to island in a boat MADE out of a mango tree and uses a bed sheet for a sail!  Crazy, yeah I know.  It’s is exactly the kind of adventure idea that has my blood pumping and dreams running wild.  Not only would we be doing 9 days navigating a small part of the Indian Ocean in a rickety trimaran held together with natural parts, but we would also camping out every step of the race on isolated beaches…. roughing it true dirtbag style just with a little coastal bum twist.  After being land locked for little over a year and unable to do anything even close to sailing, my heart races at the idea of getting back to my passion on the water and moving with the wind.

 

 

                The other amazing thing that just so happens to line up in my favor is that I am living in arguably the best possible location in Mozambique to do an overland trip to Dar es Salaam and the starting point of the race.  So at the end of December I would take a series of buses from my capital of Tete City into Malawi and then across the border of Tanzania where I am looking to jump on a classic train that would take me the rest of the way across Tanzania to the coast.  Not only does this opportunity allows me the option to bypass an expensive flight, but I get to see some more beautiful landscapes of this continent I’ve become quite fond of.  It also means that I’d spend my Christmas and New Years with my friends in Tanzania before embarking on our ludicrous voyage the morning of the first day of 2017.  Then hopefully after some successful 9 days or less of racing we’ll win ourselves some hardware to show for it and extra pride to take back home with me overland the way I came.

                As awesome as this may sound, and as incredibly excited I am at the possibility of taking this adventure on, the thing is I won’t be able to do this trip without some help from you; my friends, family, and best supporters who have already given me so much love and encouragement during my time here in Mozambique.  So let me be just honest in that this is not the way I would have liked to approach this, and my intention is in no way to make you feel uncomfortable, obligated, or even put on the spot.  But, this is my last resort and I am just looking for a bit of help from as many people as possible.  People who find the idea of this adventure to be as captivating as I do.  People who would like to see and hear me accomplish it.  If I am able to raise the funds to make this happen you can be more than certain there will be on the road updates, photos, and blog posts for you to experience this with me as best as the internet here allows me to.  I would appreciate any amount not matter what size because believe me, the value of a hard earned dollar has a whole new meaning to me from being here; which is actually close to 80 metical for every $1, actually.

                So if you are interested in supporting this, click the link below to donate. 

Support the Voyage!

Thank you so much from the bottom of my wild heart whether you donate or even just for taking the time to hear me out.  

Here’s the link to the website for the race.  If you want to watch a video or read a little about it from them, please check it out.

The Ngalawa Cup

Dia do Professor

                So the weather isn’t the only thing that is heating up this trimester here in Tete, the holiday season has been upon us in Mozambique.  In the 8 weeks now that we’ve had this trimester there has been Victory Day, September 7^th,  which was celebrating the treaty signing between Frelimo and the Portuguese to end the struggle for independence which was made official the following June in 1975. Then there was actual Peace Day, October 4^th, celebrating the treaty signing between Frelimo and Renamo thus ending the 15 year Mozambican civil war in 1992.  Each one turning into a loose three day holiday celebration, apart from school and government building being closed on these days the locals often take it upon themselves to have a lax day before and after.  Something I couldn’t complain about or change, just enjoy.  

                Though this last holiday in week seven was definitely the best one in my opinion, but I might just be overly biased.   Professors’ Day! That’s right, a whole day just dedicated to the educators and mind molders here in Mozambique.  I must say, this is something the States should get on board with.  The planning of this day started way ahead of last minute, basically a full month before.  Teachers were holding meetings and debating the ins and outs of how our day celebration would go.  From where the post ceremony celebration would happen, food to be served, how much beer to get, flavor of the cake, our group capulana design.  The process being done was quite impressive to me.  I’d rarely ever seen this much motivation and pre-planning done anywhere in Mozambique to be quite frank and with so much enthusiasm.  It gave me hope for possible future event coordinating, as long as it included a free shirt, some refreshments, and a little praise.  Each professor kicked in a whopping 950 mets, which was a solid amount considering that was about 1/10 of my monthly living allowance on one day.  Non the less the seemed like it would be well spent with all the rallying my colleagues were doing for this fund raising.  The weeks leading up we got together and decided on a capulana design, got our measurements made by the team of tailors we brought on to make our matching shirts, passed around documents making our preferences of food, desert, and drinks known.   It was on.

                The day of the celebration, Dia Doze as all my collegues just referred to it as the holiday always falls on the 12^th of October.  Morning of, I threw on my official Escola Secundario do Vale de Chitima shirt and headed over to our town’s ceremony square to meet all of the other professors.  Every school’s teaching staff from the many primary schools around Chitima to us at the only high school and even the Teachers’ College in town.  The square was packed with students as well and other public officials for the ceremony and a few speeches.  The ceremony started like any Mozambican holiday with a flag rising and national anthem, “Moçombique nossa tera gloriossa.”  Followed by a flower laying ceremony on our square’s monument, though this time instead of just watching I was pulled into line by my colleagues and given a flower, to my surprise, to lie on the monument.  Feeling so humbly honored now and a new level of pride to be a professor amongst the other educators being celebrated, I walked up with as much pose and grace I could muster up while sweating profusely as I waited my turn to lay my flowers while teachers college students sang.  I laid my flowers down and walked on off with a whole lot more gratitude for my colleagues and school.

 (That SWEEEEET Leopard Print Capulana)

 

                After the officialness was over, the square turned into a large dance party of sorts with the main stage changing from school dance groups to government speaker and back for the next couple hours.  The excitement stayed though most rest of the town square festivities until it was about time for the Do Vale professors to make our way to dinner and group celebration just across town. Hitchhiking our way over the complex our organizing professors had secured for us.  We spent the rest of the day chatting, laughing, and enjoying each other’s company on our deserved day off.  Dinner was a great big spread of Mozambican deliciousness with grilled chicken, couve, xima , goat curry, bean stew, roasted potatoes, the works.  After polishing off that bomb works we jumped into a few speeches from our own Directors of the school, topped the night off with a cake slicing and one popped bottle of champagne that everyone got a splash to wash down the bolo(cake).  Finishing the night off with nothing less than some fantastic group dancing and conga lines around the ball room.  My first Dia dos Professors in Moz and I couldn’t have been happy with the event or colleagues I was able to share it with.

 

 

 

Andrew Jennings Farr

So today is Drew’s Birthday, he would have been 26.

The thing is I’ve started and stopped this piece a few dozen times now trying to get it to what I thought would be perfect.  To make sure I was doing something absolute to honor my fellow volunteer, roommate, and friend Andrew Jennings Farr.  But as I tried to approach the story of how we met, found out we were going to be living with each other, got to know each other in 6 months to the point I am only familiar with a few good friends the post just kept getting erased by me because it just didn't feel right to be writing this at all.  Our crossing of paths wasn’t something epic, awe inspiring, or even that comical. We were put together and being the easy going guys we both were, we started to make the best of it.  Also helped that we shared many of the same interests, hobbies, thoughts, hopes, and doubts that we came to know about each other during the many porch side talks we shared at our little blue house in the dessert.  So the next few paragraphs are just about the man I got to know and a couple events we got to share.  How I am so fortunate to have gotten to know him the way I did and why I’ll miss my buddy Drew dearly.

                I can’t exactly remember the first meeting Drew and I had, can almost guarantee that it was over a frothy local brew of 2M and possibly during a city wide blackout in our training town; which is a good possibility why I can’t conjure up the exact mental image.  Though after I found out we’d be living together on site placement day the previous expectations of mine in not wanting a roommate did not come back, and our fellow trainees just kept agreeing that we seemed like a solid pairing and would have a good time in each other’s company while all the way up there in Tete.  True it was too.  After getting up to our 2 year home we discovered both of us had sort of wished for the same thing in a site.  Some place not flat with a sweet backdrop and just enough mato (African bush) in the surrounding area to explore and get lost in.  We both had good backgrounds in the outdoor sector  and were looking to taking advantage of that as much as possible while here in the uncharted area that our PC Director described to us as the ‘Wild West’ of PC Moz sites.  Drew was an Eagle Scout and he had me hooked a few times with some stories about backpacking around the desert highlands of northern New Mexico.  Hiking around our house and going for trail runs was something we both liked to do often and found a lot of solace in them.  They were something awesome that we would look forward to at the end of a work week or day and we knew was very unique to our site and made the place that much cooler to us.  We came up with ideas of trying to map out all the cattle trails and footpaths zig-zagging the mato near our house sort of like trail guides and maybe getting other volunteers up to our site for backpacking expeditions.  Even threw around the idea of starting a Mozambican Boy Scouts a bunch, though we sort of came to the conclusion that the novelty of roughing it would be lost on people who already cook on charcoal and fire every day and could probably out last us in the wilderness.  But that was a big part of our bonding, the outdoors.  Both of us were always up for roughing it just to go the extra distance and see what we could find the cheapest and easiest way.  We were making plans to try and camp all over this country.  And from the couple trips we made, we were a pretty good team. 

                               

                                                 

         

           Drew had this awesome laugh that used to KILL me anytime we found ourselves in an awkward situation whether it was somewhere lost in communication with a friend or colleague.  Realizing we were being hit on rather bluntly by a lady of the night and our Portuguese was less than stellar enough to smoothly back our way out.  Catching each other with that ‘WTF did I just watch’ look on our faces after a crazy event or a buddy showing us the latest and greatest video that was being passed around by the citizens of Chitima.  The laugh always cut the awkward tension at just the right moment, where we were both coming to the realization of what was going on but others around us hadn’t quite yet or weren’t going to ever understand what we both thought about what was going on.  It’d always come up slowly like a cork about to pop and I could hear the low chuckling start as the grin quickly spread his mustache as far as it could go across his face, then the chuckles would get louder, faster, and deeper as it turned into a full on laugh where I most definitely could never resist the urge to join in.  Depending on the situation we could get pretty loud at times.  The first dinner we had in Chitima our first night and with our first friend, Salvador, who called us off the street coming back with some beers from the village market and he fed us right there and then.  Sitting across from each other at the table outside, a lady who had eaten with us, and drank a little too much apparently, began being extra friendly with me and told me she liked what she saw and for me to give her a compliment immediately (my Portuguese is terrible at this moment in time) with an absolute dead stare of seriousness after she had said it.  I just looked at Drew and asked him if I was hearing her right in English? She than snapped in my face for looking to Drew and repeated what she had said.  At that moment the laugh came bursting out of Drew and I couldn’t keep it in after that as well.  She didn’t find it very funny and just kept the death stare the whole time.  Or the crazy adventure and oddity of how we got our chicken Rio; you all read that post.  We couldn’t stop laughing our asses off when we got home with our own galo in the house and debriefing the whole afternoon we were both there for to each other.

 

(Our First Friend Salvador)

                Porch talks, they’re something I always bring up when I’m talking about Drew.  Often the center point on how I can say he became a good friend in such sort time.  How we were making it through the ups, downs, boredoms and excitements of the 2 month limbo after training for us education volunteers, and during the game changer that was the start of school.  It was exactly just that in the simplest form.  Just two guys shooting the breeze over a couple beers and smoke with no one around at the end of a day.  We hit all the major topics: family, up bringings, past relationships, hobbies, first times and lasts, school, politics, the outside world, hopes, ideas, and crazy dreams.  Literally crazy dreams sometimes cause of the vivid and crazy ones we often got with our anti-malaria meds.  They were good talks and we built trust and respect for each other off them I believe.  They are a lot of what I’ll always remember him by aside from the good times we shared here in Chitima.  Here are a couple of my favorite things I learned about my guy while we were throwing back a few on our dusty porch.  Drew had some awesome tattoos, one of which was his family motto ‘Without Stain,’ in Latin I believe, to which he pointed out was ironically funny because it was a tattoo.  Drew was an AWESOME musician, dude could jam on the guitar which I was always an added porch talk bonus when he busted it out.  He even tried to help my helpless ass play the harmonica, I think we sounded pretty good but I’m musically inept.  He was in Band Corp. during his college years at the Citadel in Charleston and was the lead trumpeter in his later years.  Which lead to one of his other tattoos, he had the beginning to Taps across his collar bone turning into a heartbeat.  While living in Charleston he claimed to once be the biggest habanero pepper dealer in city as he had a solid harvest one season out of his backyard garden and was selling them for $20 a baggie to locals stopping by his front door from a craigslist ad he put up.  One time he said he fell in love with a Mozambican woman on the dance floor he had had the pleasure of dancing with to a song or two with while we were in the neighboring town of Songo.  As we were leaving he told me to wait, and he turned around ran back up on the dance floor and laid the biggest loudest smooch on this woman’s check leaving her slightly embarrassed and quite stunned I’m sure.  His fantastic laugh followed shortly thereafter when he returned and I just stared at him baffled and on the verge of cracking up myself.  It was reminiscing with Drew about the times here, then, and way back when along with our own projections for the future which we picked each other brains and busted the others balls over the less than occasional out there idea that I know I’ll most certainly look back on when my service is over as some of the better simple moments. 

                It’s actually really hard for me not to remember Drew each day.  Completely beside the fact that I’m back here in Chitima in the same house.  Which if you have read any of this post or any of my others involving him and our times together I’d hope you could see why I couldn’t just let this place go to the wayside and become a memory with such an abrupt and terrible ending.  This place was the starting of too good of a story and time in my life for me to not come back and try to keep the great stuff that we set in motion going.  But because of those short 6 months I was with Drew I can hear and feel his presence a lot.  From the music I jam out to all day constantly here.  He definitely showed me a thing or two about the art, upgraded my collection a bit too; Interpol has become one of my go-tos now and I got no one but him to thank.  Can’t help but laugh hysterically when a three 6 Mafia song finds its way on too, the unofficial band of Chitima’s shenanigans.  The food I cook here is exponentially better because of his inside knowledge and experience, plus the friendly unspoken competition I think we had going when we traded off cooking dinners helped.  So while our time in each other’s lives was cut terribly short, his presence in mine won’t be over anytime soon or even long after my time here in Mozambique comes to a close. 

Estamos Juntos  

 R.I.P. 25-3-16