Rain rain go away...

Today it is POURING!!! The streets are like rivers in some places and getting to UEM today was fun walking around giant puddles in the sand. I would have thought that sad would be more absorbant... I guess not! In some parts of downtown apparently there is some flooding, but I haven't been down there today.

This is our fourth staight day of rain and it's a little depressing. The city does not look beautiful in the rain, haha. Today we are annoucing the new EBs and for anyone in AIESEC, you know what that means. Except, instead of buckets of water, we will just need them to step outside for a moment. Too bad we couldn't have a nice sunny day to make the big announcement!

The funniest thing though, is the poor ladies we see when we are walking around. Normally they wear a cloth wrapped around their head. Usually colourful, with some tassles and such. But today, they are wearing them made out of plastic bags! It's looks pretty funny to see all these ladies with plastic bags on their heads, including our very own Vera!

And even when the rain is light everyone goes around with umbrellas. They are obviously not used to the rain here.

Here's what we walked through on the way to UEM this afternoon:

By request... more pictures!!






Also, the election results are official now. Guebuza won with more than 75% of the votes. Pretty much as expected. The opposition guys made a big fuss about it, but so far nothing has happened.

P.S. Zero Comments on my last post?? Come on people!

Discovery Days

Wow.

I haven’t had this feeling in TOO long! To many, it’s just another new member training weekend for AIESEC. The same sessions – AIESEC Way, AIESEC XP – but yet, something different. I had to stop and think for a moment… this new member training… is happening in Mozambique. It’s happening here, because of us. These members are discovering AIESEC, just as I did so many years ago, because of our work here. This is why I am here.

They came knowing almost nothing. Yet as soon as we started to dance, they joined. As soon as we cheered, they cheered. As they learned more about what we do, I could see the interest growing in them. When we talked about why AIESEC is relevant in Africa, the passion was clear. Was AIESEC relevant in Africa? YES! Do we want AIESEC in Mozambique to thrive? YES! What a feeling!

It’s a very special moment for Daudo too, after working for two years towards this goal, to see the first members of AIESEC in Mozambique at our first conference.

There is a long way to go yet, but I am very happy and excited about what we have achieved here so far. Our chair is an alumnus of AIESEC in Portugal. He wasn’t quite sure what to expect from us or from the delegates, but tonight after everyone was gone and we were going over the feedback forms filled with positive comments, he said he was really happy and excited with both the members and us.

I think these students have never experienced anything quite like AIESEC before. Even though the conference is small, with no fancy hotel, it has all that magic of a first conference, and then some. I saw one delegate listening to a session this afternoon and he was smiling. Not because someone said something funny, just because he was appreciating the ideas that were being presented to him. I just sat for several minutes and watched him smiling, and it made me feel so good.

I hope we are building a community here that will continue to produce those smiles.

*******

Now it’s Monday. Yesterday was another intense and emotional day. In the morning we ran the simulation which I was responsible for. It’s so nice seeing your hard work realized! Plus it was really great to see the members working together, doing their activities, trying to divide the tasks, make decisions, achieve the goals they had set. It was the first time we could really see how they work, how much they had learned the day before, and how committed they were to getting things done.
For part of the simulation they had to receive an intern. I wasn’t expecting much, because they hadn’t received any specific training on what they needed to do. Lilian and Daudo played the interns, and what a reception they had! Both of them were picked up at the “airport”, shown all around the “city”, given a nice place to stay, introduced to all the AIESECers, taken to their first day of work, and taken out for a Mozambican dinner. They were so caring for these “interns”!! I am already jealous of the first interns who will come here. They are in for a treat! And over all, they did really well in the simulation. What they didn’t know they asked or came up with creative solutions. Of course there were some disagreements within the teams, but I think it really showed them that working on a team is not easy and that they have a lot still to learn.

After the simulation we talked about working on teams and how the team should maximize the strengths of its members. Then we did some goal setting (which I don’t think they had ever done before) and wrapped up the weekend. Daudo gave a really emotional talk about the impact of AIESEC and the opportunities that these new members had. He also spoke a bit about how he felt, after two years of hard work to make AIESEC in Mozambique a reality and now seeing the members there in front of him.

I truly believe that this weekend we ignited a little bit of fire in these people. As everyone was leaving, several people thanked me for helping to bring AIESEC here. It was a really powerful moment. One guy told me that Mozambicans have been waiting for an opportunity like this, and now it was here. It makes me so proud to be a part of this. I know we are just at the beginning and there is a long, hard road ahead. We will have our problems and our challenges, but I believe in these people and I see a lot of positive things happening very soon!

And now, I would like to introduce to you for the first time ever….

AIESEC IN MOZAMBIQUE!!!!!!



P.S We got internet at home today!! That means I can be online in the evenings (morning PST), I'm looking forward to talking to you soon!

Another week closer to making AIESEC a reality!

Hey, sorry for not writing for a while. I was barely online at all last week because we were very busy with interviews.

On Tuesday we had our infosession at ISCTE and booked the interviews, 25 in total for 6 positions. We did interviews all day Wed and Fri, as well as Thurs morning. Thursday afternoon we hosted an event around global issues at the other university, UEM. It was a great success. We had about 50 people come and three great speakers, all AIESEC alumni. Since I couldn’t understand, it was my job to take picture, which was fine with me! So after a very long week we we glad to have our weekend break.

We had a pretty mellow weekend. I made shepherd’s pie and Yorkshire pudding for dinner last night. On Saturday night we did some dancing and I tried to learn some typical Mozambican styles. One is originally from Angola and another is more of a modern version.

Today we have to select the best candidates to form the two new executive boards of AIESEC in Mozambique! This week we will officially have the first members and this weekend is our new members training conference. I’m really excited. During some of the interviews, we met some amazing people and I was thinking to myself “I can’t wait to work with this person”.

This week is mostly planning the conference and starting to do EP recruitment with the graduating students. Next week I will have lots more to report.

A couple other things:

If anyone remembers way back to my Brazil blog, I mentioned that it is very common to have small cars. There were hardly any SUVs or trucks. Here is the opposite. The driving is crazy, so everyone wasn’t to have the bigger beast. SUVs and trucks are the norm and smaller cars are rare.

Mozambicans are also more patriotic than Kenyans. One guy told me this was because the current president, Guebuza, made an effort to increase patriotism among the people. But whereas Kenyans tend to identify themselves by tribe, I have not heard about any tribal groups here. Everyone says they are Mozambican. Mozambique is actually larger than Kenya (I think) and I think it is more nationally unified.

Sorry no pictures today. I need to download the latest ones but they are at home!

Saturday was pretty laid back. We went to a big supermarket to buy some groceries and things for the house. I bought some candy while we were there and made my teammates trick-or-treat for it. Somehow it wasn’t quite the same though :P

On Sunday we went to a park near our house and watched some sports. We saw some basketball, which was pretty good except the ref called way too many fouls. Then we moved next door to see some football (soccer). We watched a guys team, and then a girls team play. The girls game was better, and went to a shoot out! And on the way home we were attacked by a bat! Well… it kind of flew close to us…

Other than that we did some work and just relaxed a little. Now it’s back at the university. Yesterday I stayed home and worked on my computer because I had some documents I needed to finish. Today we have our infosession for students at ISCTEM. Hopefully a lot of people will show up! Today is the last day of interviews at UEM, so in a few more days we will have our EB selected! Exciting, our first members! I am in charge of planning the new member training weekend for them. Should be a lot of fun!

Wow a short update, something must be wrong with me today!

Have some pictures then:




Basketball!



Soccer!



Sunday breakfast!

Back again. Tell me if I am writing too much. These entries always seem to end up much longer than I expect them too.

I was thinking the other day that Mozambique is in the wrong time zone. Geographically, it is under Kenya, which is GMT+3, yet Mozambique is GMT+2. It might be so that the time is the same as South Africa, because Mozambique and South Africa do a lot of business together (in fact, most of the products we buy here are in English because they come from South Africa). Or, as Daudo suggested, it might be so that the time zone is closer to Portugal’s. Whatever the reason, it means that the sun rises really early here and also sets quite early. In Kenya the sun started going down at 7 and it was dark by 7:30. Here it’s closer 6 and 6:30. That means longer evenings with lights on and more electricity used. Oh well, they must have a good reason for it.

One thing I forgot to mention in my last post, about the trip to Costa do Sol. While I was being squished on the way home, I noticed one of the ladies with a big bucket of fish untied a knot in the end of a cloth she had covering the bucket. Inside was some money – a bill and a few coins. She took it out, counted it, took out one coin for the chapa fare, and retied the rest back in a knot.

Today was the election. As far as I know it went smoothly. Marco watched the news today and he didn’t mention anything being wrong. Apparently the results won’t be announced for another 2 or so weeks though. I was surprised by that, but I guess it takes them a while to get all the votes in from some very rural places. There were UN reps in the country to observe everything. If there is any controversy, we won’t be hearing about it for a little while yet.

But because it was the election today, it was a holiday so last night we went out with some Portuguese people to a karaoke place. When we got there, they didn’t have any electricity, so we had to wait outside. Once they got it back it was quite nice. It was funny hearing some people trying to sing in English when obviously they didn’t understand it.

Last but not least, the milk they drink here is very creamy. The regular milk is called “leite gordo” which means “fat milk”. The “low fat” milk is 2%.

Tchau

P.S. This moring it is spitting a little, and everyone is going around in coats and with umbrellas :P


More Costa do Sol since it seemed popular last time.


The heart banana bread I mentioned last time.

Weekend Update

So, lots to report this time around. On Friday night Daudo brought us home some Mozambican beer to try. One was pretty much the same as other beers, but the dark beer had an unusual flavour… coffee! Yes, coffee beer, which actually tastes better than it sounds.

On Saturday morning I went with Daudo to do the weekly house shopping. We bought a few things for the house (a non-stick frying pan, a lasagne dish and a muffin tin in the shape of hearts) and then we went to get the food. On the way there we saw a big commotion – lots of people gathering and yelling. Daudo asked what was happening and the guy said that there was a thief that has been caught. The whole street was filled with people, and you could find anymost anything being sold on the street – movies, pots, plugs, belts, jeans, etc.

They do have supermarkets here like back home, but they are more expensive, so we went to this little place tucked away downtown. It’s like an old style general store, except much bigger. We went in and sat down with a lady at the computer. We told her everything we wanted (5 kgs of rice, cereal, tuna, sugar, etc.) and then she typed it all in and gave us a print out. We took the printout to the cashier and paid the amount. Then we took the printout to another table and gave it to a guy. We sat down on a bench while the store workers went and collected all the things for us. We checked we had everything, and then made our way home.

Later that afternoon, I went with Lilian and Marco to Costa do Sol by chapa (the Mozambican matatus). Costa do Sol is a little community on the coast just outside Maputo. The beach was quite nice, though the water was quite dirty. I touched the Indian Ocean! There were a lot of small bars and restaurants along the beach, as well as people selling all sorts of things. We walked along the beach for about half an hour and then caught the chapa back home. On the was back it was so crowded that I thought my bones would break! Not so fun, but apparently Marco and Lilian made friends with the chapa driver.

For those of you who don’t know (which is probably everyone), Mozambique is having their national elections on Wed this week. There are several political parties, but the only one that really counts is Freelimo. They were the party that led Mozambique to independence and have produced Mozambique’s only 2 presidents (the first of which was a strong AIESEC supporter by the way). Freelimo has a huge backing and so really no other parties stand a chance. But campaigning here is definitely not like campaigning back home. On every wall, every lamp, every street corner, there are Freelimo posters. Guebuza, the president, is on the side of buildings, on billboards, everywhere. There are trucks of people that drive down the main streets with people singing and waving Freelimo banners. Tons of people walk around wearing Freelimo t-shirts. This morning on TV we even found out that you can buy a CD of Freelimo songs! I can’t imagine there being a song about Stephen Harper!

Lilian and I went for lunch today at Karim’s house. Karim is the president of Social Sciences at ISCTEM. Afterwards, we met up with Marco to go to a Freelimo concert that was being held in a park nearby. We wanted to see Guebuza and hear some local musicians. Unfortunatly, by the time we got there, most of it was over, but there were still a lot of people there cheering about Freelimo and littering the poor park with posters and flyers and postcards and envelopes of Guebuza.

Last night we decided to make banana muffins. The turned out very well, and looked very funny as little hearts (since the only muffin tin we could find was in heart shapes). Now tonight there is a thunderstorm outside with some sheet lightning. Hopefully it will be gone by tomorrow since Lilian and I have to walk to ISCTEM.

This week we are doing more classroom presentations and continuing with recruitment, plus doing some interviews. Wednesday is a holiday though, because of the election so we have only four days to get everything done.

Tchau!


The view from Costa do Sol