Back up in Bobete after time traveling, on leave, helping with training, and a seemingly unending series of events keeping me in the lowlands. It seems like too much has happened since last time I wrote a post, so I’ll try to compress it a bit:
- Went on leave, for the first significant amount of time since last December. I was able to go home to New York to see one of my best friends get married. To everyone I didn’t see- sorry guys. I really needed a low stress visit to home to get back on my feet and get some measure of equilibrium. For better or worse, I thought it would be easier if I kept the visit on the down low until after I got back.
- Continuing the leave theme, I spent ten days on the beach in Mozambique. Tofo is a surfers paradise, full of palm trees, long sandy beaches, and lots of people who come there for a short vacation and end up never leaving. Next update I’ll have pictures up.
- I spent a good bit of time helping the new Volunteers wrap up their training. They have all now sworn in and are out at their sites. Personally, I have three new “neighbors,” two in the Thaba-Tseka district and one working with MOVE on the same job I am. Very exciting.
- Throughout all of this, I have been looking into graduate schools, and what to do after Peace Corps. I am taking the GREs the third week of October, and will hopefully have good news sometime next April. It’s a coin flip who will have the first nervous breakdown- myself, or my 17 year old sister, who is applying to undergrad programs on the exact same schedule. Here’s to you, Gayle. May the most fragile ego win.
Other than that, my return to Bobete has been a reminder that things don’t change very fast up here. Ther
e is now a minibus taxi running from my village to the main road at least some of the time. That doesn’t sound like much, but if it turns out to be a regular taxi at all, it’s a bit like getting a parole hearing approved. Imagine-being able to leave your village whenever you want!
On another happy note, my cat is back! I left it with a coworker while I was away, and during my time in Mozambique, said coworker was transferred to another site. After a good bit of searching, I was able to track Ema down, and she has resumed her rat killing rampage. If anything, she’s a better hunter now than she ever was. In the last three days I’ve found her with three mice/rats in her mouth, and heard another two successfull hunts at night. She’s a marvel.
Regarding the title of the post: A few days ago, several police officers went to Ha Manela, the next village over from Bobete, to investigate a reported stock theft. Somehow, a dissagreement between the villagers and the police escalated, and the police ended up getting beat, and leaving with their proverbial tails between their legs. The next day, fifty police officers from all over the Thaba-Tseka district descended on Ha Manela and beat the living shit out of most of the men in the village. Since then, it’s been termed by the people here as the “war in Ha Manela.” Just a happy reminder that community-police relations are a bit different in the third world.
