Officially a PCV!!!

Im in S. Africa, Swaz, and Moz!!!
We are science teachers!!

So we have made it to site!!! I’m an official volunteer and live in Monapo in the province of Nampula. I have been here for a total of about 4 hours and already love it. It’s in northern Mozambique and is completely different than the south. The only downfall is that it’s up to a 5 day chapa ride each way from some of my closest friends.

Since it has been so long, there’s a ton to catch up on.

Site visit was a blast. It was a much needed vacation from training. I took a 4 hour chapa ride from Namaacha to Chongoene. Chapas are the most readily available method of travel here in Mozambique. I would say they are roughly the same size and shape of a VW van. The only difference is that an average ride includes about 20-25 people. Chongoene is a little, dry town in the middle of nowhere. Some perks it offers are: being a short chapa ride from Xai-Xai (a big city where you can buy pretty much everything you’d need), being about 2 hours from the capital, being right off the main road that goes through Mozambique, and being relatively close to other volunteers. We went to the beach in Xai-Xai and there are no words to describe how absolutely beautiful it was. I’ve even heard it doesn’t compare to some of the prettiest beaches Mozambique has to offer, so I can’t wait to see more! I also had a chance to hitchhike and fell in love. It is faster, cheaper, more comfortable, and easier than other methods of transportation.

The education volunteers finished two weeks of model school. It was exhausting. It turns out that preparing biology lesson plans in Portuguese is hard work. I gave six lessons to 8th grade Mozambican students. Some were better than others, but I definitely felt more comfortable in the classroom by the end.

Thanksgiving came and went. The highlight of it was finding out our site placement which was followed by an AMAZING dinner. Corpo da Paz provided the turkey and we did a potluck for the rest of the meal.

As far as site placement goes, I consider myself one of the luckiest volunteers out of Moz 14. I will be living with Esther, one of my friends from training, and about ten minutes from another friend named Amanda. They are from LA and Pasadena. Go figure. It is beautiful in Monapo, and we are only about an hour chapa ride to one of the prettiest beaches Moz has to offer!!! I’m pretty sure I hit the jackpot with site placements.

It’s absolutely unreal to me that I’ve already had such amazing experiences here in Moz and it has only been a little over two months. What makes it even more incredible is to look at some of the stats for Moz: the average family income is about $350/year and it is one of the ten poorest countries in the world. The US invests about 400 million dollars in Moz each year. By next year, the goal is to get to an absolute poverty rate of 45%.

You can now mail me at a new address. Also, don’t worry about what you have sent to the other address. The previous address will always be valid, it may just take a little longer to reach me. From now on, this address will work best:

Yvonne Contreras, PCV
Corpo da Paz/U.S. Peace Corps
Avenida Rua Dos Continuadores #24a
C.P. 526
Nampula
Mozambique
Happy late Thanksgiving and early Christmas/New Years to everyone!!! I miss you guys like crazy.