May 23, 2017
“Aquecer, Aquecer, Aquecer” – “to warm up” – was my host brother’s attempt at finding motivation to convince his body that he wanted to swim that day, as he jogged in place on the Pebane shore. Weather, which is chilly to most Mozambicans, greeted me with the memory of the Alabama change of seasons. Somehow, the first Alabama autumn winds have found me and have begun to usher out summer here in Pebane. This season change accompanied by the overcast afternoon made entering the water an extended process for my host brother, which I just so happened to capitalize on with my A+ teasing game.
Eventually, after observing my brother’s calisthenics became too boring, I waded out in to the ocean on my own, assured that my host brother wouldn’t be far behind. After I had made it out a ways in the ebb and flow of the tide, I looked back to witness my host brother running sprints to gain the courage necessary to join me. I chuckled to myself as I thought, “It’s gonna be hard to leave him in 18 months.” 18 months.
In the big picture, Peace Corps is a 27-month commitment. At every step of the way, pre-departure, pre-service training, PCV meet-ups, calls to friends and family in the states, so on and so forth, I am reminded of both how much time I’ve spent here and how much time I have left. This concept of time in the context of the Peace Corps experience in Mozambique elicits such mixed emotions in me.
Thinking about my time spent here reminds me of “the goal” of 27 months, and how much I have accomplished so far. Thinking about the time I have remaining heightens my awareness that my time here is finite. My days left to accomplish things are numbered. 18 months is my deadline.
When I view the main goal of my time as reaching the end of a 27-month service, I find myself trying to derive too much meaning from the everyday moments. I feel the pressure to quicken the pace on my path to self-discovery. While I can hope that I will feel proud of my highs and lows of service either way after my time here has passed, my original goal was never merely “to last” 27 months, as if enduring the time would be my main source of personal growth and my primary contribution to the community. On the contrary, I want to experience life to the fullest with the time that I have here; I want to make contributions as a community member. I know that at the finish line I will be eager to see my friends and family again, but I don’t want simply completing my service or my thoughts of life after Peace Corps to detract from my experience in the here and now.
This “deadline” to accomplish as much as possible with my time here also sparks some internal debate. At times, 18 months feels like nowhere near enough time to make projects sustainable. Plus, the constant reminder of my 18-month deadline inflates my emotional currency. How should I best spend my time and effort? With the time that I have, how do I adequately nurture the relationships with my host family and other people I’ve grown close to in Pebane, give myself enough personal time to process this experience, AND carve out time to teach class and make secondary projects sustainable? Depending on the point in the day, I’m constantly transitioning from viewing time as a goal to viewing it as a deadline.
On the day to day scale, a PCV once told me that the days go by slow but the weeks go by fast. This has been the most accurate description of me experience of the speed of time. In the middle of a slow day, I find myself daydreaming about the next conference, the next weekend with other PCV’s, or the next big activity. At the end of the week, I’m left wondering where all the time during that week escaped. At this moment, I find my American anxiety creeping up on me. I feel that I should forever be busy, always working with optimum efficiency toward a deadline. I catch myself, take a deep breath, relax, and remember that things move much more slowly here in Mozambique. Time here is much more relative.
18 months. That’s the time that I have left in Mozambique. I still haven’t quite figured out how I will view this time or how I want to view this time in the grand scheme of things. But, I’m willing to accept the dissonance that these unanswered questions bring in the time being.
I rejoined my brother on the beach. He never did get warmed up enough to meet me in the Indian Ocean. We walked in the sea foam for a bit longer before we began our journey home still teasing each other, still laughing. When the overcast clouds decided that they could take no more, it began to rain. Then, it dawned on me. Maybe, this whole time my host brother wasn’t warming up to get in the ocean at all. Perhaps, he was always warming up for the walk home.
MOZ likely to sunburn 