The Roller Coaster Continues: Site Placements
The slight breeze chills my nose and ears but my brisk pace up the long hill from my host family’s small concrete house into town keeps me from shivering in my thin capulana dress. The early morning sunlight beats down on my head, warming my hair and promising a hot day ahead. I have a half an hour walk ahead of me and it is 7:15. Class begins strictly at 7:30 but since we are on Mozambican time, which is eerily similar to island time, I will most likely still arrive early. I glance up from my feet, which are permanently caked in the red-brown dust that makes up most of the roads through town, and glance at the small, blond trainee walking at my side. Annie, my walking buddy, my Namaacha neighbor, and my rock throughout training, glances back at me and smiles nervously. I wonder over the fact that two months prior I had never met this amazing person who has quickly become one of my best friends.
“Where do you think you’ll end up?”
I glance around at the slightly crumbling cement houses and sparse trees lining the dusty road while I contemplate that terrifying, looming question that all of us 55 volunteers in training have been obsessing over since arriving in Mozambique. The question that will never have to be asked again after today. The answer to which will determine my life for the next two years. A shiver of nervous anticipation runs down my spine. After today I can let excitement take the place of my almost overwhelming fear of the unknown. After today I can start making plans. After today this crazy life in mozambique becomes real.
Today is what we call an IFP day. Once every week this beloved and hated day comes around. Beloved because it is the one day all 55 trainees from all disciplines and neighborhoods get to study together. Unfortunately it is also always painfully boring, filled with long powerpoint presentations, theoretical discussions and endless skits and presentations in both portuguese and english. Today I know will be more than painful. It will be torturous. Today I will learn which discipline I will teach, if I will have easy access to water, if I will have electricity. Today is the day I find out which friends I will continue to see regularly and which members of my “government issued family” I might only see once in the next two years. Today, everything changes. Because today, at the end of the day, we receive our site placements.
The day passes slower than usual. 8:00. The presenters could have been speaking Changana, the local language of the region, and I wouldn’t have noticed. 10:00. We are all distracted and subdued, staring at the clock and watching the minutes tick slowly by. 12:00. Lunch. The anticipation becomes more and more tangible. 2:00. I can taste it, like stale bread, soaking all of the moisture from my mouth and leaving a strange, though not entirely unpleasant taste behind. 3:00. 3:15. 3:30. 3:40. 3:50. 3:55. 4:00. It’s time.
We all file out to the basket ball courts. Some of us talking quietly, others, more agitated talking so quickly only half of what they are saying can be understood, and others walking in conteplative silence. We line up at the edge of the courts, where a map of mozambique with all 10 provinces outlined is drawn in chalk. I stand up north next to the provinces of Zambezia and Nampula. We each recieve a seeled, large envelope, some thicker than others. All at once we rip open our envelopes. I tear through the pages until I find the map of mozambique. On it, there is a tiny dot indicating where my home for the next two years is located. I can’t believe it. I walk down the courts past Zambezia, through Sofala and down to the lower half of the province of Inhambane. I look around at all of my fellow trainees grinning hugly. Some are hugging. Some are jumping up and down. Others are already absorbed in their packets. After about a minute of dancing around with my fellow friends who are also placed in the south, I glance around trying to see where everyone else is. And then I see Annie. We lock eyes and abruptly the gaity of a moment before is swallowed by shock. I am placed far into the south and close to the coast. Annie and my other good friend Sarah are north. Not just north, but as far north as you can get. And inland. A whole country away. Peace Corps just got real.
