Round Robin Cultural Relays

      This past Monday, the science education
group met at our library to “test” our cooking/cultural skills.  We
built fires and lit charcoal (which is harder than I thought) ,
cracked and grated coconuts, killed and dressed chicken, and ground
peanuts with a giant mortar & pestle.   All of these are totally
normal, everyday events… which is why it takes at least 3 hours to
make any meal!
-       Perma-gardening … Peter Jenson, a permaculture/bio-intensive
gardening guru came to Mozambique to teach us how to maximize our
machambas (farms/ gardens).  Basically, we showed us how to “double
dig’ beds and how to re-format the soil so that we can grow 4x the
amount of food in a small garden.  I can’t wait to have one at my
site… some of our local plants that I want to include are papayas,
mangos, avocados’, bananas, lemongrass, corn, beans, tomatoes,
peppers.  I can’t wait to have my own kitchen and be able to cook for
myself!
-       The ever-popular topic of conversation around the Moz15 group is
site placement (where we’ll be stationed after training).  November
18th is the big day! I don’t think I realized how big of a deal it
was…but it pretty much determines the next 2 years.  Mozambique is a
HUGE country (twice the size of California, to be exact!), and the
North is very different from the South.  AND since transportation is
such a mess, whoever is stationed near me will essentially be my
friends for the next 2 years.  Woof. 11 days and counting….
-       Second most popular topic of conversation: Beach trip to Xai-Xai.
The majority of our training class PLUS a ton of volunteers in the
south are renting beach houses for our “mental health break.” So that
should be awesome!  Especially since we’re going right after site
announcements….

This week is going to be our last “normal” week of training. After
that, we start Model School… a two week long summer school for kids in
Namaacha.  I’m teaching 4 lessons of 10th grade biology which will be
evaluated by my directors and other volunteers.