July 16, 2010
So I’ve been here in Vila Gorongosa a week now. I cannot say I was utterly impressed with the town when I first arrived. Granted it was rainy and muddy when I arrived. Peace Corps was pretty typical in not giving us a great deal of information before our arrival. We were told the day before we arrived that we would be staying at the local posada (hotel) for a while, due to a lack of housing in the town. But luckily my Peace Corps companion, Mona, and myself both found good housing. I found a house at the catholic mission just a about a half mile from town. The mission has a high school for both boys and girls, many of whom board here because their families live a great distance away. I have yet to meet the priest that runs the place, but I have been assured that he is a very nice fellow. I have however met the seminarian the runs the day-to-day operations. I think we will get along just fine. He studied in Rome and speaks seven or so languages, but I told him we could only speak Portuguese for the first couple of months. I am very happy with my now house and I think I will be very happy living here for the year. The house itself is very simple, but definitely a step up from my wood shack in the Dominican Republic. I have been trying to get things arranged to make it livable. Day to day tasked like fetching water from the well give me great pleasure because it gives me the opportunity to interact with the students who live here. But, I am a bit unprepared to feed myself. Getting food and cooking it in the developing world is work in and of itself. I was spoiled in the DR with a great host family that pretty much shielded me from the daily tasks it took to just keep the body running. But I’m sure I will find someone to cook and clean for me. I am over the idea that I should do everything for myself, and besides someone needs the employment.
The food here is fantastic. There are many farms in the area that provide fresh fruits, vegetables and meats. The fish even makes the 100-mile plus journey from the sea to the market. I am usually as weary of fish in these types of situations, but so far it has been excellent. I have also taken to eating meat again, it would just be too difficult to be a vegetarian and get enough protein in the diet. The chicken here is absolutely splendid. I don’t yet know how they prepare it but it tastes great. But by far the biggest perk in regards to food is the fruit. I think I have eaten more bananas, tangerines, and pineapples in the last week than I did in a whole year in the US. Everywhere you turn someone is selling fruit. Most of the people here are semi-subsistent farmers, growing food for both consumption and for the market. I haven’t even really ventured into the local produce market as a consumer, but I feel I am going to be pleased by the variety. And yes it has been confirmed that there is yucca.
Besides finding a place to live and getting to know the town we as well began work for Gorongosa National Park. The park itself is roughly the size of Delaware with only a small portion even open to the public for safari. The rest is simply not even truly accessible. Vila Gorongosa, the town just outside the park sits on the western edge of the park. And Mount Gorongosa is west of the town. The region as you might have guessed is called Gorongosa, and lies within the Solafa Province, located in the center of Mozambique. I have been told that this region is neither the poorest, nor the richest part of the country. But the shear size of the region is a little over whelming. The can only equate it to working in Yellow Stone in regards to the size of the region we are talking about. While the region encompassing the park is protected the ecosystem as a whole in question begins on Mount Gorongosa, travels through the park and then 100 or so miles to the Indian Ocean. As far as I know the park in their efforts to protect this ecosystem have not even put any resources east of the park. The park and the mountain are enough for right now. Just to give some reference to the difficulty of traveling in the region, on Wednesday we traveled to the main camp in the park, called Chitengo. It is located about 60 km from town, but took us about 90 minutes to reach, and these were on good roads. Chitengo is the main camping and management area for the park.
My main focus will be with the conservation and reforestation of the mountain. While the park itself has a human population it has not had as severe an impact as the population that lives around and on Mount Gorongosa. The mountain itself is actually three mountains. I have yet to master their individual names but collectively they are referred to as Serra da Gorongosa, or the Gorongosa Range. It takes about 45 minutes to get to the base of the range from town. One must travel on the main highway for about 15 minutes and then on dirt for the remainder. And this only gets you to the closest point of the range. While not a massive range by any measure the shear idea of simply getting around make dealing with the mountain a large task. From a far the mountain looks lush and green, it is only up close that you can clearly see the deforestation that has taken place. We traveled to the mountain on Monday for the first time and it was like going back in time a couple of hundred years from our modern society. It was fascinating to see people who live so close to the land, but sad to know that their effort to simply survive and feed their families was destroying the very ecosystem that they needed. Just spending a few hours with these great people puts into perspective of the level of effort that will be needed to conserve what forest still exists. People are for the most part cutting forest to make room for farmland. As I understood before I came, there are 30,000 people living on the range. I was informed however that may not be correct. There may in fact be 30,000 families, but this does not make sense to me just yet. Either way there are a lot of people on this range. Just to give a perspective of the stress put in the mountain each year. If there are indeed 30,000 people each living at a level of $1 per day then the mountain has to produce about $12 million worth of resources each year. Now try to imagine if people want to live on $5 per day. Needless to say the pressures are immense.
But I’m having good fun. Thank all, Marty
