The End of Simba's Reign

One of the roughest days of my Peace Corps service was the day that my dog, Poppy, died. Death of pets is rough anywhere, but it's worse here, where it's easy to get extremely attached, but there's little to no veterinary care available. I wouldn't wish that desperate, panicked feeling of helplessness on anyone.

And yet, yesterday, my roommate Laura had to go through exactly that.

Laura found Simba on the street when he was a tiny puppy, and raised him until he became big and fat. Laura and Simba went everywhere together, to the point where, if she wasn't accompanied by her usual canine companion, people in town would ask "Onde está Simba?" Simba was very energetic, and he loved people. Whenever we came back from a trip, as soon as he heard, saw, or smelled us, he would come bounding towards us, with flapping ears and a wagging tail. I didn't like Simba at first -- he was too noisy, too slobbery, too exuberant -- and yet, Simba grew on me. Who couldn't love him? Still, he was 100% Laura's dog, and she adored him unconditionally.

Through Simba's favorite activity, exploring, he picked up some kind of nasty disease that ravaged his body. Little by little, he shut down. He stopped eating, stopped drinking, and, yesterday afternoon, he stopped breathing. He died about two feet from where Poppy died a little over a year ago. We buried him next to her.

Here's to you, Simba. You were only with us for six months, but you were a good dog. Have fun romping around with Poppy in the canine afterlife.

Baby Simba, small enough to hold in a one hand.

Simba's first chapa ride

What a handsome young dog!

Playing with the boys

Rest well, Simba.

Calamidades at the Market

Shopping here is so much more interesting than shopping back home. With a hundred vendors crammed into a tiny market,every single one of them wanting to sell you something, it can be a bit hectic -- an incessant background noise of "Oi! Hey! Hello! Amiga! Friend! My friend! Dona! Sister! Look here! My sister!" Once you learn to drown that out, though, there's nothing so interesting as wandering around a large market, hand tightly grasped on your purse, smelling chamussas and bolo, seeing the vibrant colors exotic of fruits and vegetables imported from more fertile places, and passing row after row of fascinating calamidades.

Calamidades are second-hand clothes, sent from developed nations, that arrive in the boatload in Africa and are distributed in giant plastic-packaged cubes to various vendors. Some calamidades are just dumped on the floor, and you have to do the work yourself, looking for the nice skirt in a sea of old t-shirts, leopard-print overalls, and striped-neon leggings. The upside? These finds are rarely more than 10 meticais -- about 30 cents.

In other instances, the calamidades vendor will sort through piles, pick out a particular type of item -- puffy jackets, polo shirts, or jeans, for example -- and then hang them up on make-shift clothes-hangers in their "specialty store", and charge 50-100 mets per item. (About $1-3) While these are more expensive, you can usually find better quality items this way, and you don't have to wade through a hundred old t-shirts that say things like "Springfield County's 5th Annual Hog Cook-Off 5th Place Champions" or "Dr. Jeffries' Orthodontics Office's Team Teeth!"

Calamidades are fun because you find so much hilariously random stuff there. When Peace Corps volunteers go in a group together, we play a game to see who can spot apparel from their home state first. New York and California have it so easy. I got particularly excited on one occasion when I found a "2011 Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo" shirt. I went to that rodeo! I also saw a Texas Folklife Festival shirt once, and a Dallas Cowboys jersey.

Other gems include t-shirts of questionable repute, one memorable example being a shirt proclaiming "I'm Not a Gynecologist, But I Can Take A Look." People will buy these without knowing what they mean, which explains why my star student in night school regularly wears a shirt that says in big bold letters, "Harden The Fuck Up." I equate this behavior with whatever mentality causes Americans to get tattoos of Chinese characters they don't actually understand.

Some people make calamidades shopping into an art, like my good friend Anna, the Queen of Calamidades. She can spend hours looking through a dusty pile of clothing for that perfect item. I certainly don't have that kind of patience, but I've had a few brilliant finds: A large canvas Eddie Bauer bag that fits absolutely everything and makes me feel like a rugged awesome photographer for National Geographic ($10), a pair of yoga pants and a purple tunic that I bought offhandedly one day in Messica that have since turned into my most worn travel clothing ($4), and, most recently, a really awesome United Colors of Benetton canvas backpack that I take on all my short weekend trips ($7).

Mozambican markets simply are more fun to shop in than American chain stores. I used to get a rush from flicking through the newly discounted items in the 70% Off section in Target. I think those days are over. My advice: If you ever make it to Africa, make sure to go shopping in a real market at least once. It's hectic, it's loud, it's smelly, but it's fun.

Sandals imported from the Masai in Kenya and Tanzania.

The beadwork is all hand-sewn.

So many things to look at!

Egg pyramid!

Thumbs up for used shoes!

The End is in Sight

It seems like just yesterday that I nervously walked into a conference room in Philadelphia and sat down quietly at one of the tables strewn with pens and nametags, awaiting the beginning of the unknown adventure in front of me.

Then, twenty-seven months seemed like a long time. I didn't know much about Mozambique, I didn't know what to expect from Peace Corps, and I didn't know any of the people sitting awkwardly at the table with me. It's hard to believe that since then, two years have passed and I'm nearing the end of my service.

A few days ago, the volunteers in my group, Moz 19, got our official COS (Close of Service) dates -- the date that we will officially stop being a PCV and become an RPCV (Returned Peace Corps Volunteer).My last day as a Peace Corps volunteer will be November 21st, 2014. That's in 143 days, or four and a half months.

On the one hand, I'm very excited to go home. I can't wait to be back in the land of ice cream, yoga, netflix, smartphones, big-as-yo-face burritos, and, naturally, cheesecake. In a way, I've been looking forward to going home ever since I got here.

And yet, I'm going to miss this place. I had a really nostalgic moment yesterday, as I was in class with my favorite 10th graders. They were putting parts of the story "The Ant and the Grasshopper" in order, and they were laughing, talking -- involved in what they were learning. One of them jokingly asked if he could turn his assignment in written in Nyungwe instead of English, "so that Teacher has to do her homework too."

Back when the end seemed really far away, it was all we could think about. Sitting in the back of a rattling old pickup truck in a cloud of dust on a potholed-filled road, the thought "Only one more year" was comforting. Now that it's "Only four more months," it feels much less comforting. It's terrifying!

Still, the next few months will be action-filled. We're finishing up the second trimester of school this month, and then we have two weeks of vacation in August. In September, we have our final conference, and later that month is the English Theater Competition that I'm organizing this year. In October is Teacher's Day and we'll hopefully be painting a giant world map on the side of our school, and then by mid-November,school (and Peace Corps) will be over. I'll travel to Namibia and South Africa with Lisa in December before flying to Germany to spend Christmas with my family. Before going back to the States, I'll meet two old friends in Prague and hopefully pay a short visit to some other friends in the U.K.

So, to all you people back home reading this, I'll see you in January 2015. Get ready, cause I won't be!