City Life! (Nampula, Mozambique)

Before leaving for Mozambique, I searched the internet for as many blogs, YouTube videos, and websites as I could find to help me create some type of picture in my mind as to what I could expect. One blog in particular still sticks in my mind. Written by a woman from South Africa who now lives in Nampula, the blog reflects the hustling and beautifully chaotic nature of Nampula. She described the constant dust, chapas (private mini-buses) packed with people, motorcycles zooming here and there, and bumpy roads. She finished off with saying that she thoroughly enjoys the city that she now calls home. After living here for just a short time, her descriptions seems pretty acurate! …And I’m enjoying every part of it! (Except the long lines at the grocery store check-out and bank.)

(This picture makes me miss the rural areas!)

                After nearly a month on the road traveling through the north parts of the country (Districts of Nampula and Cabo Delgado), we are now back at our ‘home-base’—Nampula. I miss those few weeks of visiting the rural communities every day, but I am enjoying this completely new experience of ‘staying put’ in one place. I have been graciously welcomed into the home of one of my work buddies…which means I’ve been enjoying home cooked meals, people in and out all the time, and a place I can call home for a little.

                At 7:00 AM we catch the bus out to the agricultural research station (IIAM-Nampula) and head to the office. Of the original 8 members on our enumeration team, we have 4 helping us out with all the data that we’ve collected over the past few weeks! By 3:30 we are wrapping up the day and hopping on the station bus to head back to the city and eat some lunch (I’m still getting used to the different eating schedule). Afternoons are full of errands…like daily bread runs to the bakery. The picture here features a laughing employee at the padaria who thought it was pretty funny that I wanted to take of picture of him (I just wanted to document a normal day!). 

Below is a picture of one of our meals with my host family: xima (a ground corn mix), veggies, and lula (squid).... yumm. It's normal practice to always wash your hands before meals and then eat without utensils. I try to do this, but (as you can see from the picture) I cheat sometimes and bring out the silverware. Also pictured is one of the family members fetching a coconut for me...gosh that's more work than I expected, including the part where one needs to climb on top of the house (although I didn't do that...I just documented it with my camera).  

Until next time... tchau (bye)!! 

Day to Day...on the road!

(Written June 14th)

          

      And so it began… the first day on the road to visit our first district. Mongovolas, within the Province of Nampula. It’s our closest survey location, with only a two hour drive. Actually, the small town which we ‘head-quartered’ ourselves for four days was only 70Km, but the roads don’t make things easy! Almost entirely unpaved, big bumps, bicycles, pedestrians, and flatbed trucks full of people were the most common obstacles on sometimes one-lane roads. However, the drive was beautiful!

                Our plan is to find a ‘home-base’ at each main location and then visit two different villages every day. Our hotel for this past week was decently nice, but I did have to get used to things like having one shared bathroom for all the guests and no running water; however, there was hot water for showers! We just had to ask for hot water from the kitchen when we were ready to shower J

                So far I’ve visited four different villages, as our team divides into two and each group visits a different village. Sometimes our drive is up to an hour from our ‘home-base’ in the town. I’ve really enjoyed visiting these various places, as each village has a different feel and something new to me. I usually spend my time visiting the enumerators at various houses or work on my laptop on the tailgate of our truck. The picture below sums up my normal view pretty well: we have one of the enumerators speaking with a resident, a woman with child carrying wood, and an animal or two. Since the villages are fairly large, I sometimes have people accompany me as I move around visiting the rest of the team. Below is my little tour guide!

Why Peanuts??

                Before coming here, I knew peanuts were an important crop for this region, but I did not know to what extent. The more we are out in the field, the more I’m learning about the valuable role of peanuts for these nearly subsistence farmers. As the data is starting to come it, generally, it can be noted that these families have very little access to animal products but eat peanuts almost everyday—important for protein intake. For many of the farmers, selling small amount of peanuts (a few sacks a year) is the only household revenue. Grown entirely without mechanization and usually even hulled by hand, it is a labor-intensive crop. In one out of the four villages, only one had the machine pictured below to assist them with removing the peanut shells—But even this is laborintensive with the hand-crank!

               

 

Finally, I will conclude with a fun picture with a group of kids. Adults and children alike absolutely love to have their picture taken! Many have never seen a camera before, so when my camera comes out, a crowd of people does too. Actually, some the kids in this group were pretty scared of me at first, because they have never seen someone who looks like I do, but they warmed up.

First Interactions: Into the Field

Local enumerator (right) with farmer (left) 

Books, YouTube videos, stories from professors: These all help shed light on the realities of poor  smallholder farmers in various places around the world. Today was my first experience visiting a village and interacting with groundnut farmers here in the district of Nampula, Mozambique. Our team arrived to the village and met under a large mango tree in the center of the community to talk with the chef and another elder about our intentions. It was a beautiful, cool day with children, goats, chickens, and other residents mingling around us as the team conducted their first interviews. The local and American PMIL collaborators mainly talked about the project and visited some of the individual team members as they were completing their interviews (a length of almost two hours per survey).

Children incredibly excited to see their own pictures

Multifaceted Communication

I sat with one pair for a while (pictured above) just listening. As the enumerator, Monea, asked her about her farm land, her crops, and production practices, the farmer used a mixture of Makuwa (the local language) and Portuguese. She spoke carefully, using twigs and tuffs of grass beside her to share her point. To be honest, I had no idea of the details the woman was trying to explain given the mixture of languages and her different accent, so my understanding of certain things often came from what Monea marked on the survey or explained to me in Portuguese or a bit of English. It made me think a lot about the way we communicate-- essentially the art of passing thoughts or ideas to one person to another. There's verbal communication, there's so much more: from demonstrating peanut drying structures with small twigs, to sitting on the ground with someone (to help show equality and respect), to wrapping a skirt around your pants before you speak with a farmer (to be respectful). This small actions send important messages.

The village 

The Face of Food Insecurity 

One of the team members spoke about the situation of the woman farmer they interviewed, a widow and head of a five person household. The farmer spoke of her 2 hectare plot (machamba) that she cares for all by herself, without mechanization, to receive a crop to sustain the subsistence-farming household. A few weeks ago, her adult daughter fell ill and moved back to live with the family. Her illness caused her to spend many weeks in the hospital. To cover costs, they were forced to sell nearly all the family's harvest-- a food supply that normally sustains them through the winter months. When asked how they were going to have food to eat, she answered simply, "I don't know." This story gives a small piece of insight into the difficult realities that many of these farmers face.  

Meeting the Local Team

Today, June 3rd, was the first day 'on the job.' Our PMIL two partners from the University of Connecticut and I were ready in the lobby of the hotel for an 8:00 AM pick-up from our driver. Around 8:45 AM we were out the door... I wonder how Mozambicans view time? Time is such a cultural construct and something  that I will grow to understand.

Young men transporting coal by bike. One bag is worth about $4 USD

We drove about 20 minutes to the IIAM research station, and my eyes were glued to the window the entire way. There this wonderful travel sensation, as EVERYTHING is so new to me. However, I see all these new things and different activities but really do not have any understanding of the reason behind them. Because of this, I just love hearing what locals, such as our driver, says about certain things along the road. For example, what are the big white sacks piled on the side of the road? Salt! (for cooking only I was informed).

The road, including huge holes, on the way to the station

Intercultural/Inter-lingual Communication at Its Finest 

Imagine. 8 local enumerators with little to no English, 3 Americans with medium to no Portuguese, and 1 local bi-lingual coordinator. Even with the language challenges, we needed to check the English to Portuguese translation of the survey and ensure all enumerators were clear of EXACTLY what the survey was asking. Question by question. Talking in circles between two languages was long at times, but it was the only way to make sure everyone was on the same page. It was a long day, but everyone's attitudes were fantastic (with power outages and no snacks to boot)! I think we have a great team here :) And the next step? We will make corrections to the survey this weekend and get back to it on Monday with the rest of the local team.

Day 1: Reviewing the survey with the team 

Cheguei!! (Arrived!!) Nampula- Mozambique

Touchdown! After a 25 hour journey from Romania, I was met with a sign held by Mendes (one of our research team partners) with "Emily Urban" written on it...gosh I love that feeling! Somehow I have a wonderful skill of being able to sleep really deep practically anywhere, so I still felt very functional after the trip.

On the plane, I struck up a conversation with a guy on the plane styling boots, a big hat, and a sleeping mat-- a Peace Corp volunteer, Anthony, returning to the area after a quick visit to the US. Mendes kindly offered him a ride to the main street (on the way). We hopped in the truck and this is when my eyes started OPENING VERY WIDE... people, cars, bikes, kids EVERYWHERE. After a year living here, Anthony felt back in the element as we chased down a van full of people to see if he could hitch a ride to the next city. WOW! By the way, do you know that about 20 people plus bags fit in a minivan?? (Pictures to come).

After visiting the bank and even getting a chip for my phone (thanks Mendes for your help), I was ready for a break. Although feelings of being overwhelmed took me by surprise, I have a feeling that I'm going to really love being here. I feel a friendliness here so far. By the way, my Portuguese knowledge is soooo helpful.

Romania! So much beauty...

Romania Overview :) 

This past week (of two) has been filled with lovely landscapes, passionate agriculturalists, warm and loving people, and new insights into an unfamiliar agricultural system.

If you see a passenger van packed with people rolling down a very rural dirt road (or even bouncing through a hay field), it could be us! Six enthusiastic Agricultural Communications students (and 1 Food Science student), one professor, and one graduate student (me) from the University of Georgia, 4 Romanian graduate students, and 1 representative of Heifer International have been traveling through the country. Here's some pictures to explain our experience best :)

Capturing enthusiasm on camera!

Single cow households

Honey tasting from the "Sweet Progress" Cooperative

As a co-leader of the trip, the most important aspect for me was supporting the growth of our students. Of course, I was learning as much as they were, as this was my first time in Romania as well. For many of them this was their very first time abroad! In the last day, we had a  de-briefing with the group to collect key take-aways from the trip. As I see myself taking students abroad as a faculty member (sometime in the FAR future), here were some key thoughts of the students:

•  Language barriers!- They noted that sometimes they just didn't understand what was going on around them and noted their dependency on strangers for translations and advice. What was a universal language on the trip?? DANCING, they noted :) 
• Commonalities across cultures- Both US and Romanian students noted all the similarities between them--music, jokes, sayings, and interests
• Professional communication differences- Communications education takes various approaches and forms. Thus students noted working through these different styles while co-writing their stories with their US/Romanian teams. 
• The untranslatable- Sometimes there is just not a perfect direct translation! (Especially with cultural aspects, which means go travel there yourself, they said.) 
• Everyone needs to study abroad- What a cool take-away from the students. After only two weeks, they noted that being taken out of their comfort zone allowed them to grow, think, and experience new ways. Additionally, they noted that as they meet people around the world (many having never met Americans previously) they are modeling what "Americans are like." 

On the Road! Summer 2016

It's the summer I've been waiting for...with a Master's thesis complete and all my final assignments in, it was time to return to Pennsylvania (from Georgia) to give long needed hugs to family and fill my bags with 2.5 five months of belongings. Let me say, two weeks in Romania and then two months of rural Mozambique travels do not fit so well into one medium-sized suitcase and a backpack...but it is possible! (We will see how this goes once I am there.) 

[L-R] Uncle Scott, Grandmother, and I 

Pre-travel packing with cats offering little to no help :)

Family's farm in Bernville, Pennsylvania

Summer Plans 

The summer includes two parts:

• Two weeks in Romania as a co-instructor of a study abroad offered through the Department of Agricultural Leadership, Education & Communication. Along with Dr. Abigail Borron (program leader) and Heifer International- Romania (now transitioning to 'Open Fields'), 7 students interested in agricultural communications and 4 assisting Romanian students will travel throughout various sites in Romania to learn about Romanian culture, agricultural practices, and the work of Hiefer International. As this is a service-learning course, the students will have a hands on experience helping to advance the mission of the local projects through their expertise in communications...cool!
• Two months in Mozambique working alongside the Feed the Future USAID Peanut and Mycotoxin Innovation Lab (PMIL), stationed at the University of Georgia. After nearly a year and a half of involvement with the Management Entity, I am beyond excited to engage with our international partners in Mozambique. Along with team members from the University of Connecticut and Mozambique Institute of Agricultural Research (IIAM), an economic value-chain analysis of peanuts in the Nampula area will help researchers better understand the access, practices, and market opportunities of this important crop. My role? Travel with the local team to conduct 400 household surveys!