Paul and Eli Blog in Moz

Well, not really audited, but the Boys Conference (the one I went to in April) sent up a volunteer, Daniel, to see how the boys´ project was going. He stayed at our house for a while and we had a good time. The murals are going well and the students enjoyed the chance to show off their work.
During the weekend I took Daniel to Bay Diving and we saw a big school of dolphins swimming close to shore; It was my first time seeing dolphins here, too bad Eli didn´t come with us that day.

Also we´re now finishing our last ´normal´ exams at school, and the official final exams start next week (they´ll be cumulative finals). After that we´re basically done. We´re planning on comming to Maputo on Oct. 13th, but there´s a lot of things for us to get situated before we leave.

The really exciting news (and Eli is making fun of me for considering it so exciting) is that a new group of 55 volunteers arrived in country today.

We have a small crisis. Our empregada, Rosa, traveled to another town and hasn`t been here in a while. So Eli and I have been living on a diet of hard boiled eggs and bread. It`s not that we couldn`t cook anything else- it`s that all of our dishes are dirty and Rosa isn`t here to clean them. If she doesn`t come back soon, we may be in for a rough ride.

Actually, it`s not that bad (really, her absence has made us try frozen hotdogs, which you can eat together with bread and eggs.)

Another impeding crisis: (well, not really, but an impending event) we will be changing sites. Peace Corps is going to close our site and we will move to another town this December. Nacala is a pretty city and we like the school, but due to the size there`s too much crime for it to be a good site. Eli and I have been robbed twice so far (within the last 6-7 weeks), so both Peace Corps and ourselves think a move is the best idea. The school and (at least some of) our students are sad that we`re leaving, and we`re sad too, but we`re also looking forward to moving into a smaller place where we can be more integrated with the community. (Nacala, pop. 200,000+).

We are not sure where we`ll move to; we will probably stay somewhere in the northern provinces. In mid-October we will go down to Maputo to help out with the training of the new volunteers, then back to the US briefly until December. In the middle of that we`re thinking of treating ourselves to a safari :-)

Eli turned 23 yesterday (I can no longer say, ´I`m older, Eli, I know better´) and I think the last three days were some of our best yet in Mozambique. For starters, on Friday morning (the 15th) we were picked up at our house by our missionary friends, who took us out to a private house on the beach; which they were house-sitting for South African missionaries. The weather has been great, as it`s just starting to get warm (by which I mean HOT), but comfortably so. Our friends have their own boat; which they built, and which we had the pleasure of going out on. We cruised around the bay a bit, to check out the sites, then went to ¨Paradise¨, a coral reef on the other side of the bay- to do some snorkeling.
It was amazing. The water is not that deep; we had great views of all the tropical fish and corals- big groups of black and white and yellow and blue fish everywhere. We saw a few larger fish too, like kingfish. On our return trip across the bay we spotted two Humpback whales (a mother and a calf) swimming not too far from our boat. Talk about huge! We only saw their backs as they swam and blew water out their blow-holes, but they were gigantic. We got closer to them- about 50 yards- and followed for a ways. We got a really good view of them! Later, we spoke to someone who saw us from the shore who thought we were too close- but they didn´t seem to notice us when we were out there.
That night we had a fish barbeque, with kingfish fillets that had been caught that morning.

On Saturday I gave Eli her birthday present; we were picked up at 9am by Bay Diving, the tourist resort in Nacala. We spent all of Saturday and most of Sunday there. We stayed in a nice A-frame chalet that, when you open the windows or doors, looks directly out over the bay. They also have their own beach, and the two days we were there the beach was probably the nicest I´ve ever seen it. It seriously looked like something you usually only see in advertisements- crystal clear water and a dozen shades of blue. We spent most of our time just sitting on the beach and reading.
The food at Bay Diving is also very good (especially the dessert!) and for Eli`s birthday they made us Macaroni and Cheese with ham. They surprised us by serving dinner in a little cabana away from the main restaurant with candles and flowers- it was pretty fancy.

We are kind of disappointed to come back and have to teach J The only bad thing is that when we came back, we found the cat had been locked all weekend in our bedroom! (I think maybe the wind slammed the door while he was sleeping- otherwise Rosa got so sick of his meowing that she locked him in and forgot to let him out!) Anyways, only a few weeks of classes left, punctuated by a couple of holidays. We´re thinking of coming home from mid November to mid December, and having Christmas and New Years here in Mozambique.

Here are some pix of nacala: The bairros (or: where most everyone lives) and the beach!



The other day we went to the beach with our missionary friends. They were house sitting in a place by the beach- it has an amazing view of the Bay! We went snorkeling and saw a little coral garden with some interesting fish. I didn´t get a great view because it was so deep that I could barely make it down before I had to come straight back up (bad timing with the tide, added a couple of meters of depth). There were lots of jellyfish, but the kind that don´t sting. We´ve gotten a little more used to them, so now its fun to poke them with your finer and push them around the water. It´s strange what you can get used to.

From the shore we saw a pod of humpback whales (the Bay is really DEEP!) We saw one slapping the water with his tail, others were blowing water out their blow holes, or just swimming. It was pretty cool.


By the way, we are planning on comming back to the USA for the holidays! We don´t have exact dates, but I think we´ll come back in mid November, and maybe leave right after New Years.

Hey guys,
For now any mail you want to send us should go here:

Paul and Eli
Corpo da Paz/Peace Corps
345 Avenida de Zimbabwe
Maputo, Mozambique

Thanks!

1) The city of Nacala (we live in the downtown area near the port, the area all around is neighborhoods- its a big city! 2)The Bay of Nacala from above (Nacala is onthe lower right side of the bay). The pix come from google earth, which give good quality shots of downtown Nacala, but don't even give a good one of my house in Michigan!

Funny story, our Macua teacher (who happens to be an 11th grade student at night school- he's 22 though and has a kid) was taking a french exam a few days ago. A big part of the test was reading comprehension. The story he had to read was written by his teacher, and it was about Eli and me! He told everyone sitting near him that he knew the people from the story on the test, but he said nobody believed it. The french teacher is from the congo and lives in the apartment right below ours.

Right after my birthday we received something like 3 packages in the mail, I got 3 birthday cards and 4 postcards (all at the same time! I think the post office saves things up to make delivery easier). Anyways, Eli took a brownie that my parents had sent us, filled it up with candles, and gave me a real birthday party. Well, close enough- I got 1 refrain of Happy Birthday, but even the cat ran out of the room, so she cut it short. I got a bottle of green food coloring (I'm getting a green MSU cake sometime in the near future) and a birding magazine. Now though, I have to think of something to do for Eli's birthday which is less than 2 weeks away!

If you have ideas please help me out- right now I'm just planning on sharing my green cake.

-paul