-----Original Message-----
From: Me
Sent: Tuesday, November 11, 2008 6:56 AM
To: Mom
Subject: (no subject)

Mom,

How are you?  I was sorry to only be able to talk to you for five minutes when you called on Sunday.  It was a long and busy day of goodbyes with no time for anything else.  I'm in Maputo now, however, with no one to see except for a doctor and my boss, and so have a lot more free time.  I spent the last weeks focused only on finishing work in my village and saying goodbyes and so I'm going to take the next few days to reflect on my last two years and think about going home.  It feels absurd to imagine it: I'll be living in St. Louis in just about three weeks.

I told you that last week was full of goodbyes and finishing my work.  I put together the discs that I recorded with the church choir with Sr. Tomás, a well to-do guy in our community who owns a nice computer (the guy with South African satellite CNN, who let me come over to watch the election results), so that all he had to do was copy them.  I met with a couple of teachers to make sure that they knew how to use the school scheduling procedures that Chipanga and I put together last year.  I turned over all of the journalism club's documents and supplies to a teacher friend, Evónio, and gave all of my science fair materials to a young chemistry teacher, Carlos.  I prepped my 12th grade students for the national exams, which they took on Friday, and met them at school after the exam to go over the answers with them and figure out their scores.  Everyone seemed happy with how he or she did; I'm hopeful that all of them passed (I'll find out when I get home and call Evónio for the results).  I printed out little cards with my photo and contact information on them and gave them to friends as goodbye notes.  I took many more portraits of my community.  And, lastly, I emptied my house until it was bare again - just like it was when I arrived - selling and giving away all of my things until I was left sitting on the bare concrete floor.

Peter, my housemate, left on Friday and, as there was nothing left in the house but a straw mat, bucket of water, and a broom, I moved in with Chipanga.  On Saturday, I showed up at 6pm mass at the church and was told to go home and come back in a couple of hours as mass was canceled in order to prepare a dinner in my honor.  About 50 of my students and other kids in the community that I knew showed up with food and music at around 9pm and put on a sort of Friar's Club roast, in which each kid took turns standing in front of the group to offer praise and/or make fun of me and then offer me a hug or kiss on the cheek.

Sunday, the day that you called, was out of a dream.  I spent the entire day outside of my house, leaving at 7am to prepare the choir's cds with Sr. Tomás in order to present them at church that morning.  Mass was an enormous celebration - my goodbye coincided with the visit of a family of Nigerians who had come to see their son-in-law - and there was dancing and a ceremony in which I stood in front of the church for 15 minutes receiving trays of fresh vegetables and fruits (and 12lbs of sugar!) from dozens of dancing village women who presented their gifts individually to me and danced away (I couldn't take the mountains of food with me on the plane and so I divided it afterwards amongst a few of my neighbors who've hit hard times in the last few weeks).  I was asked to play drums with the choir and at the end of mass asked to give a short speech in which I thanked everyone for welcoming me into their homes and onto the verandas, offering me conversation and food; for their kindness and patience; and explained that I learned much more than I was ever able to teach and received more than I could ever give.  I presented the cds that we made as a small thanks.

After mass, I spent the day saying goodbyes.  I was invited to all of my friends' homes and, while I couldn't take up every invitation, I ended up eating 7 full meals.  People approached me on the street and offered their thanks and, some, even gifts.  I made rounds about my village until 11pm, long after I normally turn in (and after much of the village has gone to bed) walking the empty streets in the rain and dark to give my last goodbyes to friends who had stayed up waiting for me.

I hardly slept that night and woke up early the next morning and was greeted with a half a dozen students who helped me arrange my things.  They accompanied me - my entourage - across town, carrying my bag to the chapa that would take me to the airport.  A couple of them actually came all the way with me to see me off when I boarded the plane.

It was a day on which I was reminded about how lucky I am and a day for me to give thanks for that.  I could have never imagined such a goodbye.  It made leaving a whole lot easier, putting something like a seal on my going away.  While I wasn't able to thank everyone that I should have, all of the ceremony offered a sort of closure.  It still seems absurd to me, however, that I'm leaving.  I'm almost incredulous to the fact that I will be in St. Louis working in a sterile lab in just three weeks.  It's hardest of all for me to imagine that I won't be seeing the faces of people that I put so much care and effort into building relationships with, into encouraging their future successes, into listening to their fascinating stories - that the little boys Domingos and Julinho won't accompany me on my walks through town any more and that I can't just call up Chipanga after any small success to hear him say "Alleluia!".  It sometimes seems crazy to me to leave a place where I feel content and successful.  But I'll be trading good things for good things.  I'm looking forward to seeing you guys and I'm eager to reinsert myself into intellectually-challenging science and studying medicine, which fascinates me and into which I've put a lot of work into just preparing to learn.

I had fun last week imagining my Mozambifriends as they might be in a couple of years when I'm able to return to see them, imagining what they might be doing, where they'd live, how they might grow.  Chipanga's 3rd daughter, Paulina, who was born the first week that Mary was in Mozambique, and who is still fixed in my mind as a newborn with slick black hair, transparent skin, and the tiniest of fingers, is walking now and speaks a dozen or so words.  As she walked around Chipanga's house this weekend holding my hand, I was able to get a better sense of how such long periods of time as my being here pass.  I'm curious to get back home and see how everyone has grown while I've been away.

One last note about my week: A few weeks ago, I wrote a farewell piece for the student newspaper, Jornal Despertar, that I help organize, comparing the end of the school year and the end of my time in Mozambique to the harvesting of crops.  I said something about how when the harvest comes we see the fruition of our hopes of the planting season; that we celebrate what has come from our hard work and the simple passage of time; and that, having seen the realized hopes of our last year's efforts, we begin to dream of the fruits of the next year's planting.  I thought it was fitting that the first rains of the year came on that Sunday night to leave me drenched walking through the dark to say my last goodbyes. And that the next morning as I left my home, my neighbors left theirs to prepare their fields for their next year's harvest.

Hope all is well at home.  Write or call when you get a chance and tell me how you are.

Love,
Matthew

¶ 10:07 PM