Year 2 - Week 6: Mid Service Conference

Week 6: Mid-Service

Don't be fooled by the title of this post. We are well beyond our official mid-service point. But this week was our Mid-Service Conference in lovely Maputo. I won't waste a lot of words about the conference itself. We had some sessions on funding, monitoring and evalution, project re-evaluation, how to spend our next year, and some other fun stuff. We also endured some poking and prodding from the medical team and the dentist.

The session that caught everyone's attention, though, was when Mozambique's Charge d'Affairs (essentially Ambassador) came to speak to us on the last day. He usually has some interesting things to say and today was no exception. We learned that there were four countries this year who fell out of Freedom House's "electoral democracy" group: Guinea, Honduras, Madagascar, and Mozambique. Three of those had coups; Mozambique didn't. But Freedom House must have seen the election as so fraudulent that they probably don't see it as a proper democracy. I, for one, can't make a good assssment of these things. Neither Richie and I, inspite of my desires to talk to people, have talked to people about the election, but it is a concerning assessment.

For most of us, the week was all about catching up with long-lost colleagues. For us, we haven't seen most of the people in the north and a lot of people in the south, so it was excellent to play catch-up. On a more "business"-related note, the week was also great for people to get up on secondary projects. I received some great tools for teaching computer classes. I look forward to putting them to use in Machanga in the months to come.

There were two items of importance for me that supercede anything from the conference. The first was that I got healthy again. Peace Corps diagnosed me with a urinary tract infection. Pleasant, I know. Apparently, dehydration and a lot of travel will do that to a guy. It hasn't been a fun experience, but the doctors got me on meds quickly and I was feeling better by the end of the week. Along with me getting healthy, I got my computer healthy. With lightning fast internet and new software, I was able to get everything functioning correctly. I am very happy about this situation.

It was a strange week. Usually our weeks are very level, but this week was very up and down. All I had to endure was the bus ride from Maputo to Vilanculos....