But it's not all chocolate and cheese over here...

I know I've been posting a lot about my own transition to life over here, and I think that it's a legitimate topic for me to talk about. After all, it's hard to leave everyone, establish new ties, and try to live in a completely new culture. In the same vein, it's easy to get caught up in talking about that, in continually posting about how great it is to eat cheese. It's also easy to get caught up talking with the other Americans about stuff we miss, like yesterday when we expounded for half an hour about why Costco is so wonderful. That type of stuff is fun, and necessary to help us cope.

But life here in the last week has thrown me for a loop. Two people in our community have died senseless deaths, deaths that probably wouldn't happen in a place with more resources. The first was actually one of the men who rents a room out of our 'dependencia' (extra house) and works over at a construction project across from my house, helping build a school. I first met him a few weeks ago when I was doing my laundry in the stone basin in our courtyard and he came up and got a little bit in my face. It was Sunday, his day off, and he's obviously had a few beers. He asked me about myself a lot and it became apparent that he was harmless, just interested in the American living nearby. I saw him a few more times after that, and a few days ago I waved goodbye to him as I left to go teach in model school.

Later that afternoon, when I was walking home from model school, I saw my host sister downtown, and she told me the bad news: there had been some sort of accident at the construction site, involving the crane and a bunch of concrete blocks being dropped. Our renter happened to be below the blocks, and his condition was grave. He was taken to Maputo, about one and half hours away with a broken arm and cuts to the head.

I found out the next day that he died during the night.

Obviously, this has affected me. I knew this man, and he was a good person, working here in Namaacha at one of the only jobs available to support his family in another town. Of course, things like this happen in the States, but in a town this size in the States, the hospital would have been able to handle his injuries. I keep thinking about that last morning I saw him and about the random nature of life.

The other case, though, affects me even more. The neighbor of one of the other trainees went into labor the other day and went to the hospital to give birth. But there were complications and she needed a cesarean section--something our hospital can't do because it can't get sterile enough. So she had to be taken to Maputo, but since there are only two ambulances for the hospital, they had to wait to see if others had to be taken to Maputo as well. In the process of waiting, she and her baby died. She was twenty-two.

It's these types of things that remind me that even though I am doing fine here and can focus on finding things I like to eat from the States, there are real and serious problems that need to be addressed. The woman who died was my age, and she didn't have to die. Lack of resources and bad luck dictated her fate, and she perished because of soemthing almost completely controllable. It's frustrating to realize that and to not know how to even begin to address it. But I just wanted you guys to know that what's happening over here is larger than anything I can write on this blog.