So hi to all of you lovely people.
This week was a big week. First I want to acknowledge that yes, with absolute certainty I tell you that my Mae is pregnant. If I had any more doubts, which I did, they were solved with my entire language class telling me today that my Mae is pregnant and how could I even question it. So mozeltov to Mae Ricardina, and I may have a tiny new sister in the coming months. We'll see. Hopefully the Baby Daddy is around once or twice more in the next seven weeks, which is what I have until site placement!!

In the meantime, I've been spending my days in a very predictable way, but has, apparently and unknowingly, brought me to the top of my language class. Today for language, our groups just cooked, which was good for Portuguese when the moms actually spoke in it. They tended to revert to Shangaan, which we PCT's felt gave us leave to speak together in English, which in turn didn't help our Portuguese. But you win some, you lose some. Lunch was three hours in the making and included matapa, which is cooked with ground leaves, peanut flour, coconut milk and oil, and various vegetable flavors. It also had couve which I love and reminds me a bit of broccoli. I think they may be vegetable cousins.
And then the topper! Fish! Which I didn't eat, but I did gut! I figured if I have visitors in the next two years I should at least know how to prepare fish, if not chicken too. So I cut me up some fish. I have to say, my knife skills are coming along nicely.

Anyway, during this cooking/talking class my language teacher said I was doing very well in class. Which I'm not sure how to take, since she isn't the strongest language teacher i've ever encountered. But I'll take it.

Before lunch we had our health class, and today was a session featuring two PLWHA (people living with HIV/AIDS). One woman, one man. I have to say, some of what they shared with us was a bit surprising. Well, just on the man's side. He is HIV positive, as well as his wife, and has all the education about ARV's that he's on, about transmission to children as well as transmission on varying strains of HIV between the two of them. And yet he insists on not protecting his wife or himself, claiming trust, and of needing to have two boys in the future to ensure his family legacy. Really. I know there are a lot of steps a family can take to reduce the chance of PTCT (parent to child transmission), but wow. It says a lot when two HIV positive, poverty stricken people are that insistent on trying for a male child. The resistance to protection between partners is also something to be angry and desperate about. The man is ill, and has been That was why he was tested in the first place. And yet, a simple step is thrown out the window due to the cultural practices and slight preferences of Mozambique's patriarchal society. One day. We'll get 'em one day.

We took a field-trip through the mud this week. It had rained for the past several days, leaving my sandals looking more like platforms, since the mud is all clay and that will stick to shoes like Xima sticks to ribs. We tracked 26 pairs of muddy shoes to the hospital and say what a secondary level hospital looks like. Small. Clean, but small. The infrastructure is clearly lacking, but the staff was very warm and what was available was clean and efficient. And the hospital is connected with support groups for the area, which they recommend and utilize, so it is better than many other hospitals at that level. In Moz, there are four levels of health facilities: primary, which are health posts, secondary which are small hospitals, tertiary which are provincial hospitals, and then quartile, of which there technically is only one, in Maputo. So it was nice to preview the type of facility I will probably be very well acquainted with.

Well, the power has already gone out once tonight, so I'm going to finish my book and end this crazy Friday night at a prompt 9:30pm.

Book to Read:
28: Stories of AIDS in Africa

Kbye!

PS
I just successfully wrote the entry at home, put it on my flashdrive, and got it here. You have NO idea how many times I tried doing it before. I'm a computer genius!