Perspective

Last night, I was talking to my parents and we did a little run-down on the status of the packages they sent. Since I have been here, my friends and family have been wonderful about sending me cards and packages. I had been getting the feeling that my folks were sending me things almost as a form of therapy, helping them to feel like they were doing something about the fact that I am so far away and in a developing country where I may not always be comfortable or as safe as I was in the US; this feeling was confirmed by my father. Similarly, although I love every bite of chocolate and every sip of tea from what they send, the best part of getting mail is the feeling of connectedness it brings. The feeling that even though I am so far away, a little bit of home can arrive here.

But the mail here does come with some challenges. Boxes are frequently opened and things do go missing. Some letters arrive in 10 days, while others take two months. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to the order in which they get here - not size, not place of origin - they just show up when they do. I have advised people who plan to send things that they shouldn't declare anything of any value, as this will make the package much more interesting to people in the post office here, but the definition of valuable is different in Mozambique. My dad had sent some episodes of the one TV show I am sad to be missing on a flash drive and had declared the drive on the package. I mentioned that that might not make it, since flash drives have been taken from packages before. But the I idea of a luxury item like recent episodes of a Showtime show not making it was hard to get upset over. I am very grateful to him for sending it, but the world will move on if it doesn't arrive. And I still get the warm fuzzies of knowing that he tried.

Evidence that Peace Corps life is good.

In terms of physical needs, because I ended up in a mid-sized city, I don't want for much here. I have a nice house, electricity, running water and (soon) internet in my own office at my school. I have easy access to a variety of food, including cheap, delicious fresh fruits and veggies without end, and a variety of proteins. Sure, I miss fresh seafood and soft-serve frozen yogurt cones, but those are luxuries I can easily live without. I don't even have to qualify my comfort level by comparing it to other people: I am just happy and comfortable here. [Editor's note: This is not to say that I don't jump at the opportunity to eat ice cream when I can. I did just eat an embarrassing amount of gelato in Maputo this past weekend.]

Basically, I have everything I need here and people send me the stuff I want; i.e. life is good. So I get a little surprised when people comment that I am taking the little difficulties well. There are  definitely things here that make life more complicated than in the US, but I expected that when coming here. I have found that by managing my expectations, most things are pretty easy to take in stride. (That, and doing yoga every day works miracles for patience!)

Life was good at the fish market in Maputo this weekend.

But in truth, what makes the biggest difference is the fact that I am here voluntarily. I sometimes take issue with the fact that I call myself a Peace Corps Volunteer when I am being given housing well above the standard of most of my Mozambican colleagues, have free healthcare that is better than that available to 99.9% of Mozambicans and get paid a decent (by local standards) stipend every month. But I am very aware of the fact that I volunteered to come here and can leave at any time I choose. This is certainly not the case for the vast majority of Mozambicans.

This point has been driven home painfully over the last week as the southern part of the country has been devastated by flooding. Rains hit the central region right around my birthday in early January and lots of roads in my area were impassable for a few days. Other than a papaya tree that fell in my backyard, I came through unaffected. My friends a few hours south live in a more traditional Mozambican house; they have an outdoor kitchen area and pit latrine outside, both of which took some serious damage due to the rains. And I am sure that many people living in mud-brick homes with grass or corrugated metal roofs had a much rougher time, too. But the situation in the South right now is a true disaster.

Scenes from Chockwé, Gaza Province. From USAID Mozambique and TimesLive

So far, more than 100,000 people have been driven from their homes and at 40-80 people have been killed, depending on the source you read. People are trapped on their rooftops, with reports of women giving birth on roofs. Roads that are were already bad have been washed out completely, leaving towns cut off from aid, or simply food and water, until boats or helicopters can be sent. I had seen pictures and read reports last week, but got to hear stories directly from evacuated volunteers when I went to Maputo for a meeting this past weekend. It turns out that most of the worst flooding came not because of the rain in Mozambique, but because the rain in South Africa led that country to open its dams, sending torrents of water down the Limpopo River into the Gaza Province of Mozambique. There are also reports that a South African crocodile farm let thousands of crocodiles out into the water. (There are crocodiles in lots of rivers here and many volunteers have friends and neighbors who have lost family members to them.)

Most of the volunteers who had been evacuated from their sites in Gaza and Inhambane, the province just north, were understandably upset that their houses had been flooded and they probably lost many of their belongings. Some were worried that they wouldn't be able to return to their communities and would be moved to a new site. But they were all acutely aware of how lucky they were to have been evacuated by the Peace Corps and got a somewhat haunted look when they started talking about the damage that had been done to their towns and what their neighbors, friends and colleagues would be facing to rebuild. As Peace Corps Volunteers, we have resources at our disposal that just aren't available to those we live and work with every day.

Disasters really highlight this difference, but it is always there. I can get frustrated with the fact that I am preparing to teach a course I have never taught before and live in a city without a real bookstore within a day's travel. I can get irritated when my flight is delayed indefinitely and the people at the gate don't know if the plane we will be taking has left its point of departure yet. I do shake my fist every time it is supposed to be trash day and despite the fact that I pay the city to pickup my garbage, they have left it and the neighborhood dogs have scattered it all over the sidewalk. But the truth is, if it is really so bad, I can leave. But the people living next to me will be facing the same reality while I am back in a country where ATM's usually have cash in them and most things follow some semblance of a schedule. Where physician density is above .027/1,000 people and HIV prevalence is below 11.5%. Where less than 21% of children under 5 are underweight and more than 56% of the population is literate. But I came here because Mozambique faces these problems and I want to do what I can to help. And for me, the good in life here significantly outweighs the bad.