I haven’t updated this thing in two months – but I don’t think I have too many die-hard followers… so it shouldn’t be a big deal.

My second year as a PCV in Mozambique is going well (I am almost four months into it). I have become a much more approachable person here – colleagues, neighbors, students and even random people in town are much more willing to talk with me and also to ask me for stuff (people will ask for anything). It seems that my becoming more approachable has also coincided with my becoming busier. Not only do I have much more teaching to do this year at my school in Gondola, but I also took on a biochemistry course at a nearby university (a job for which I would be vastly under qualified in the states).

Just for some perspective on how slowly things move in this country (especially construction projects). The incomplete classrooms that I mentioned in my February post are still incomplete. The first trimester of classes will officially end on Friday April 16 and I will have taught for twelve weeks in classrooms that lack doors, windows, and a paint job.

I have developed a very bad attitude towards chapas (the main (only) form of transport here in Mozambique) this year. I think I have mentioned chapas before – they are minivan-sized vehicles configured to fit twenty-plus people in the most uncomfortable position possible. It is a very inexpensive, slow, and unsafe way to travel, but it is the only thing available in Mozambique. Most African countries employ a similar system of transportation with the minivan-sized vehicles in varying degrees of disrepair correlating with the prosperity of the country. The result of my bad attitude towards chapas is that I have been doing a lot less traveling and a lot more staying in Gondola.

The biochemistry course (mentioned above) that I have taken on has been an interesting addition to my course load. I am teaching second-year nutrition engineering students at the Catholic University Mozambique (which is a fairly prestigious university in this country). University students tend to part of a different social/economic class than my high school students. In general, they are much more eager to learn and much more willing to correct my bad Portuguese.

Thanks to heavy rains in February some opportunistic wildlife used our house in Gondola as a makeshift shelter. The highlight was when an owl spent the night (he pooped all over the place trying to get out); the lowlight was when we discovered we had rats. The rains, though, have ended and our home is once again catering primarily to humans and cockroaches.

Overall, my life in Mozambique is moving along nicely…nicely enough that I have begun to start looking ahead to life after PC... it is a scary thought.