So why is it that I'm home? Peace Corps was opposed to my web site and its content and so they felt it better that I end my service, or they would end it for me. What, exactly, did they have objections with? They gave me a list, so I've copied that list for you here.

On November 21, a PC vehicle came to my house in Massaca, while I was preparing to go to the Joaquim Chissano secondary school to observe exams. A memo was dropped off which I had to sign for. That memo stated that there was content on my web site that Peace Corps staff wanted to discuss with me. The entries listed were (and this is exact):

23-Nov-00 - 6th paragraph
16-Dec-00 - 7th paragraph
26-Jan-01 - 1st paragraph
18-Jan-01 - 1st paragraph
17-Feb-01 - 1st, 2nd and 5th paragraphs
16-Mar-01 - 5th paragraph
31-Mar-01 - 3rd and 5th paragraphs
07-Apr-01 - 1st paragraph
19-May-01 - 6th paragraph
15-Jun-01 - 7th paragraph
22-Jun-01 - 5th paragraph
29-Jun-01 - 7th paragraph
14-Jul-01 - 3rd and 5th paragraphs
11-Aug-01 - 1st paragraph
07-Aug-01 - 8th paragraph
24-Sep-01 - 4th, 9th and 15th paragraphs

While in the memo PC stated that they wanted to discuss the above entries, when I had the meeting with the staff, we didn't discuss them. Rather, the staff told me that they wanted me to do early termination (resign) or that they would do administrative separation (kick me out), which I could appeal.

During the meeting, the director was angry because of some of the comments I made about the school director of Moamba and the students. He asked me what if the Ministry of Education or the president of Mozambique, Joaquim Chissano, saw my web site, what would they think. My reaction was, well, it wasn't my intention to offend anyone, only to write honestly about my life and what was happening here. The director's comment seemed bizarre to me for a couple reasons. Number 1, when all of that crazy stuff was happening in Moamba, PC never once thought about explaining to the Ministry of Education: look at what's happening to our PCV. Instead, PC policy seemed to be that you have to take whatever abuse and harassment nicely and graciously, no matter how crazy, because PC doesn't want to make any waves. Their purpose is only to exist and if something is happening to you, well, that's your problem…PC isn't going to defend you and protect you even if the situation isn't your fault.

The second thing: there is no such thing as freedom of speech when you are a PCV…this is obvious. I don't regret the web site. This past year has been really tough. Insane things were happening. And I know that when I was in Moamba I felt scared and helpless and it was a bad situation. I'm glad I had the web site as an outlet to tell my family and friends what was going on. At least then I could feel understood and they could be there for me.

The third thing: don't be a Pollyanna, the Ministry of Education is already aware of the reputation of the school director in Moamba. One of the staff members of the ministry came up to me after I had left the school and commented about the school director's reputation…it appears that it's not a secret. Regardless, I'd be happy if someone in the Ministry if Education did read the web site and saw the comments about the school director. Maybe then, they would feel embarrassed about what had happened to a volunteer from another country who came to Mozambique only to help and teach their students.

The thing I don't understand is why PC didn't come and offer more support when all this was happening. This is one thing many of us Moz volunteers discussed while I was in the country---that even though the PC staff are returned PCVs, they seem to forget what it's like to be in the field. Many of us felt that when we would call the PC office for help, we felt like we were bothering them. On top of that, PC staff had both Mozambican and U.S. holidays so half the time you called they weren't there. But while I was experiencing my problems in Moamba, no one was helpful. In the isolation, I had to make sense of a senseless situation without my family and friends. I was kicked out my house, and the director was trying to kick me out of the school, and she was finding other ways to be a bully. It seemed to me that PC didn't understand at all what the situation was like in Moamba and how tough it was, and they didn't want to take the time to help and really assess the situation.

This is how the problems in Moamba started-and let me also say that this happened in a two-month period, two months:

Before going to my site, I had already been worried about the school director in Moamba. There had been different stories I heard during training, which concerned me. I talked with another volunteer in training about it, from my group, Moz 3, because he had gone to Moamba for a site visit, and he told me that he didn't think I would have as much as a problem because I was a female and the school director had asked specifically for a female.

In Moamba, I was replacing another volunteer, from Moz 2 (I was Moz 3) who decided he didn't want to stay his second year. He had had a lot of problems with the school director and had gone to the PC nurse repeatedly with problems. I would be joining another PCV, from Moz 2 (my future site mate), who taught Biology. I was replacing the PCV who had taught English. So my new site mate had already been serving for a year, while it was my first year.

The mood at the school in Moamba was strange. I don't know how to describe it, but things were very dysfunctional. I recall one afternoon, while I was reading in bed, I heard the school director yelling at one of the teachers outside his house. She was yelling because his maid had pulled out some grass in his front yard and planted ornamental cabbage. The school director wanted the grass back the next day. But instead of telling him in a professional normal manner, she was yelling at him, and proceeded to yell at him for about 5 minutes. This is an example of how life is at that school. Nothing you had was yours. The school was like a dictatorship. I can say that things happening in Moamba really messed up my head. And I had differences with my site mate, which didn't help things either, it made things worse.

The first day at site, my site mate and I, and three other volunteers from Moz 1 and Moz 2, were eating dinner together. For a few minutes my site mate and I were sitting outside, talking, and I mentioned that a friend of mine was flying into Jo-burg, and I was hoping he might stop by Maputo to hang out a couple days. My site mate proceeded to ask me if this is someone that I would be sleeping with if he came to Maputo. I was really caught off guard because my site mate was a guy and I didn't think asking me something like that was appropriate and that's not the kind of question you ask someone when you don't know them. So this is an example of what my site mate was like. When we had a visit in Moamba from another volunteer in April, who said he had met our new nurse, my site mate asked with interest, "Is she hot?" I found these kinds of comments very offensive and inappropriate and they defined his general attitude towards women.

I found it difficult, in general, to relate to the majority of other PCVs in the country, not just my site mate. Training itself was really tough. More than 2/3rds of our group were just out of university and here, I had already been working for 3 years as a reporter in DC, with the lifestyle of a working professional. Our group went out every night to the bar to drink and many commented that they liked that PC was like an extension of college where they could go out drinking every night--they liked that they were able to prolong their college experience. Me, I hardly drink and I didn't feel like going out to the bar every night, so that excluded me from fitting in. I found it difficult to relate to kids just out of university. While some things I could relate to, I would say that on the whole, I found it difficult to connect to anyone in a real way. People were pairing up and cliquing off. And the problem with cliques is that they are bound to be exclusive in a negative way, which harms group cohesiveness.

When we would have sessions with just us training volunteers, to talk about problems, I would sit back and watch people: no one was listening to one another, they were just talking over one another. Our training itself was disorganized and a mess, and this caused problems too. There was no mentor. It was this huge chaos with all these kids just out of college trying to be group leader and fighting to be heard.

When I told the present PC nurse that I had had problems relating to people in our group because everyone was so young, she said that she didn't think there was a big difference between someone age 22, 23, 24 and someone aged 27. I disagree strongly with that. There's a difference. There were really strange things going on, things I couldn't believe. One of the girls in our group, a 24 year old, had gotten involved with two of the guys in our groups within the 2 ½ month span of training, one in November, the other in December. There was a plastic Tupperware bowl with a lid in the room where we would have refreshments between sessions, and our group decided that we should put predictions in there of who will hook up with who and things like that. I found this sort of thing embarrassing and inappropriate.

I was looking back over my journal and it's clear that I was very unhappy. I was disappointed. I thought I would meet people who I could relate to, more people my own age. But what I found was people who wanted to go out drinking every night and hook up and flirt with each other and play cards for hours on end. I found people who, instead of listening to one another, competed with one another for airspace. That was our training. Not at all what I expected. It was really disappointing.

So, back to Moamba…it was February, the first week of classes, I had been at site two weeks. I had already met my future boyfriend, Damiao, the design teacher in Moamba, and we had become best friends, hanging out and talking all the time. It was the first day of classes and that same day, a Chemistry teacher arrived (a female teacher) to teach at the school. Damiao informed my site mate and I that the director might be placing new arriving teachers in our houses, which is against PC policy. My site mate was strongly insistent that Mozambicans not come in our houses and he had added incentive as to why: his mom and sister were visiting for two weeks in May, and his girlfriend was coming to stay for the summer, and sharing his house with a Mozambican would have made these situations, which he had been looking forward to a long time, tough.

As the Chemistry teacher was being led to my house, my site mate intercepted her, walking between her and the path to my door, and explained to her she couldn't come in my house because of PC policy. This made me look REAL GOOD. The next day, when I went in the teachers' room, the Chemistry teacher exchanged glances with other teachers and began laughing, which made me feel really bad. We called PC and told them what was going on-that the school director wanted to place Mozambican teachers with us in our houses. The houses themselves are small. They have two bedrooms, a bathroom, kitchen and dining room. They are meant more so for teachers to come and stay during the week and go home to their family, to their home in Maputo, on the weekend. To have your family live there, if you're married, is tough.

The school director already knew that my site mate and I couldn't live with Mozambicans. When I was first dropped off at site, two weeks before classes began, we
were waiting outside the director's office for a couple minutes and then were escorted in.
We sat down on the other side of her desk while the director talked on the phone for a good 10 minutes, in a conversation that seemed to be not about business, based on her facial expressions and tone, but a casual conversation with a friend. When she got off the phone, her attitude was, well, strange, like she wasn't really happy to see us. She wasn't very pleasant and what pleasantness there was, seemed engineered. We had just left the school director of Namaacha who was warm and kind and pleasant. This was a big contrast. The PC deputy director introduced me and explained the regular stuff. The school director was reminded that I couldn't live with a Mozambican or with my site mate (a male), due to PC rules, and they just wanted to make sure the school director understood that. I remember this distinctly because it was the last thing our deputy director said to me, as we were standing outside my front door. My Portuguese was really bad at the time so she was translating to me what she had said to the director so that I knew what had been said.

After we called PC about the housing situation, the PC deputy director came the next day and met with the school director. The deputy director came to my house afterwards and told me that the school director asked if she couldn't just get rid of me and trade me with one of the male volunteers from another site. Oh yeah, things were looking up! The following Friday, after a few days of nasty looks from the school director and hearing lots of negative commentary about the school director from my site mate, we had a staff meeting at the school. During that meeting, the school director went around the table introducing all the teachers. She introduced everyone but me, and even made eye contact with me, while still proceeding to pass by me without introducing me. During the meeting, she introduced one of the new English teachers, who had arrived that day, and announced that another English teacher was coming. Moamba didn't have that many sections of 8th, 9th and 10th grade. Two teachers would adequately have covered the course load, three teachers would have been too many. It seemed to me that she was going to bring another English teacher on board and then tell PC she had no more need for me. One of her sidekicks (she was like a mafia boss who has her men on the side), Victor, was glaring at me through the whole meeting and smirking. I was able to keep myself from just walking out of the office or starting to cry while I was sitting at the table, but just barely.

After the meeting I told my site mate that I wanted to get out of there and that the school director was trying to let me know that I wasn't wanted. I pretty much felt like hey, if I'm not wanted, then I want to leave. I was so hurt and offended by her actions and I called PC and told them to pick me up. I explained what had happened and when they talked to her about it, she said that she didn't introduce me because everyone knew who I was. The school director had even introduced herself! She didn't introduce me on purpose because it was her way of letting me know I wasn't wanted. I remember sitting there thinking: why in the world did I leave my friends and family for this? To be treated like this? What have I gotten myself into? I should just go home. The school director also told PC that she wasn't planning on hiring another English teacher and made some sort of fumbling excuse about it. The fact is, the threat was there, she wanted to make it clear that she didn't want me there, and she had succeeded. It was obvious to me that I wasn't wanted and that she would win-like she saw it as some sort of game. Damiao would report back to my site mate and I about what was going on, anything the school director was saying about the situation. It was very disturbing to hear that she had said: I'm going to get these people, and other comments like this, when we had come in peace, just to teach the kids at the school. She didn't see us as human beings who she should treat with respect. But then, this was her attitude towards everyone in general. It was a really crazy, abnormal situation.

I told PC I didn't want to return to site until the situation had been resolved. The school director asked me to think of the students and return before classes Monday. I agreed, but I was crying, feeling really bad about the situation, feeling like I should really be away from the site until things were fixed because the situation felt bad. She wanted me to stop in her office before I left for the weekend, because she wanted to apologize for not introducing me. I declined the offer. Her cruelty was too recent and too harsh. I didn't want to see her and I couldn't stop crying. I also thought she was a crazy lunatic and my pride kept me from accepting any apology. After how disappointed I was with training, things just kept getting worse. I wondered why this school director ever asked for a volunteer if she didn't want someone. And on top of that, why did she explicitly ask for a girl if I would have to have my own house and she didn't want to supply that? Why hadn't she thought about all this before?

The following week, the school director had the provincial director, from the Maputo Province (the boss of school directors for all schools in the Maputo Province), come to the school to discuss the housing situation. Damiao was asked by the school director to sit in on the meeting, so I know what went on in the meeting. Damiao asked my site mate and I why someone from PC hadn't been there. My understanding, from what PC said, is that PC was notified of the meeting but was given the wrong time, or was called about it just before it was starting so they couldn't make it. In any case, Damiao explained that the situation was serious and that PC really needed representation because the school director was making the meeting completely biased and was making my site mate and I look bad. She said, in a nutshell, that she was tired of "those people" and this crap going on and needed the house because she had no houses left. Meanwhile, all this time, during and after I left, there had been another house where no one lived. The teachers at the school explained that this is because during conferences, the school director would rent this house out for money under the table. My site mate and I told PC that there was an extra house but PC never told the Ministry of Education, never defended the situation, because PC, it seems, treads on eggshells and can't cause any waves. It's unfortunate, but it seems to be the reality.

At this point what was I thinking? I think I thought, because PC wasn't coming to meet with us, because when I talked to them they talked down the situation, like it could be worked out, that somehow PC would persuade the provincial director to let us keep our houses. Damiao was trying to stress that the situation was serious. I went to the Peace Corps office to ask the deputy director what she felt was going to happen, and the deputy director talked to me about it as though it was all really nothing and that things would be worked out. It was frustrating because here at my school, I had to deal with an emotionally intense situation, and in the PC office, they were talking to me like it was nothing. Besides having to deal with a harassing situation, I was having to adapt to a world where I got water out of the tap three times a day for about 5 minutes, had no flushing toilet or shower, had to boil my water (which was saturated with salt and tasted terrible) before drinking it, had to wash my clothes by hand, and struggled to find food in the market that appealed to me so I wouldn't starve.

A lot of us volunteers have felt like, and I don't know if this is just a strictly PC Mozambique thing or is universal in all PC offices, but that the people in the office forget what it's like to be in the field. When all this stuff was happening, I was literally freaked out. I felt so acutely that I wasn't wanted, that I was afraid that maybe, when I came back from going to the market and was going to enter the school (enclosed by a wall with guards at the gate) that maybe they wouldn't let me enter on instruction from the school director. That's how affected I was.

Maybe that same week, or a week later, more teachers arrived. The school director wanted one of the teachers to stay in my site mate's house, just for the night to sleep. My site mate refused. He locked the door and said he wouldn't open it. She was adamant. He refused. She, Victor and the pedagogical director, Davas were all standing there, telling my site mate to open the door. I was sitting in my room, on my bed listening to the situation, not sure if I should go outside, or if that would make it worse. Davas demanded again that the door be opened. My site mate refused. They each demanded again, repeatedly, that he open the door. He refused. They escorted my site mate to the school director's office and demanded that he sign a paper stating that he would not open his door unless he had permission from the U.S. government. My site mate refused to sign it. Me, I wasn't used to such brute tactics and I'm sure I would have signed something, not knowing what to do. My site mate asked to call PC and called the director. He was explaining what was going on and again, I'm not sure the director realized how scared my site mate was (he was really shaken) and what was happening until my site mate exclaimed: I'm here with them in the office and they're wanting me to sign something. WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO? The PC director got on the phone with the school director and was furious, and yelled at her asking: what the hell are you doing to my volunteers. She became extremely apologetic. My site mate didn't have to unlock his door, but the situation wasn't over.

It was the week after the school director had demanded my site mate open his door. PC had set up a meeting with the provincial director to talk about the housing. It was going to be later that week, the Friday, I think. The school director was furious with us, worse then furious, she was venomous. She called my site mate and I into her office, I think it was Tuesday, and told us we wouldn't be able to teach until we settled this housing situation. Funny, because when she didn't introduce me during that past meeting, and I thought it better that I leave until the situation be resolved, she asked me that I think of the students and put their best interests in mind and come and teach. Here, she had turned the table and refused to let my site mate and I teach until there was some resolution.

On that first day, when my site mate intercepted the Chemistry teacher entering my house, he had gone into the school director's office to explain to her PC policy about housing, about living with Mozambicans. During the discussion, the school director asked my site mate, matter of factly, why he and I couldn't live together. Damiao was sitting in on the meeting. My site mate was shocked that she would ask such a thing. Damiao was also shocked. For me, I didn't it was so big deal…the prospect of living with a guy. But Damiao and my site mate thought it was a crude question. The thing that bothered me about living with my site mate was not the fact that he was a guy, but our personalities were so different that living together, I felt, would create a more stressful situation. My site mate's attitude towards women disturbed me.

The school director seemed to not realize, or care, that my site mate and I had nothing to do with the housing situation. It was out of our hands. She didn't care when we told her that PC still had to meet with the provincial director, which was happening at the end of the week. She still wouldn't let us teach. I had had a health problem (a cyst on my breast) and the PC nurse (at that time) decided that since I wasn't allowed to teach that week, I should fly to Pretoria and get it checked out to make sure it was benign. Meanwhile, through all of this stuff, I had been sick a lot. I had diarrhea all the time, and I was having problems with my stomach. At least once a week I would be sick having to throw up. When I was at the airport, waiting for my plane to come in, I went to the bathroom, nauseous, stomach problems. As the plane was landing, I again thought I would have to throw up and had the barf bag ready. It was tough to feel normal and stay positive when I had to deal with so much psychological stuff and on top of it, I was so sick all the time. I flew out on Wednesday to Pretoria.

That Friday, PC met with the provincial director. I had said that I had no problem moving in with my site mate. My site mate had given the director his OK as well. During the meeting, it was decided between PC, the provincial director and the school director that my site mate and I would move in together. There was another problem, though. Before I left for Pretoria, my site mate and I were warned that I had been taken off the class schedule. I had no classes now while before, just days before, I had been teaching 5 classes of both 9th and 10th grade. I had already given 9th and 10th grade their first exams. I warned the PC director so that when he went into the meeting, he could ask about it as well. When the PC director asked about the schedule, I can't remember what the school director said in defense. I think she might have said that she wasn't sure if I "was coming back", whatever that means. The school director made a promise to put me back on the schedule with the classes I had had. The provincial director concluded that if I decided that I didn't want to live with my site mate or a Mozambican, if I changed my mind, she would place me in another school in the Maputo Province.

I arrived in Pretoria on Saturday and met Damiao in Maputo. He told me that the school director, after having Momad, another teacher, change the schedule to take me off, came in on Saturday morning, during the staff meeting, and told Momad he had to write another new schedule with me on it. Damiao was chuckling because the school director had thought she could push me out, he said, so she had already taken me off the schedule. It was during the meeting between herself, the PC office and the Ministry of Education, that she realized she couldn't just give me the boot, that she actually had a boss over her and couldn't do whatever she wanted. I think it came as a surprise to the school director that she wasn't able to simply kick me out of the school. By this time, psychologically, I was pretty shattered. I was shocked that someone could be so cruel, when, as a volunteer, I had only come to teach.

Damiao and I arrived in Moamba on Sunday night. I went to my site mate's house to find out when we had to move in together. My site mate sounded funny and he told me he had some bad news. Look, he said, my Mom and Dad and my girlfriend and her parents are all strict Catholic and I just can't live with a girl. OK, I said, call the PC director and tell him. I was so frustrated. Why hadn't he just said that in the first place? It would have saved everyone time. On the one hand, I totally support the freedom of decision. But on the other hand, how old is he?!? It seemed to me that the decision was made based on the plans he had had for his mom and sister to visit, and his girlfriend. It would have been pretty awkward for his family and then his girlfriend to be there and me too.

After my site mate finished telling the PC director that he changed his mind and we couldn't move in together, I got on the phone with the PC director. Well, I said, what am I supposed to do? What should I do now? Well, he said, you're gonna have to move your things into his house for right now because the agreement was that the house would be cleared out by Monday morning in order for you guys to start teaching again on Monday. OK, I said. I knocked on my site mate's door and he wasn't there. It was pouring rain, heavy rain. Some time later he got home and I heard the door close. I went over and knocked. I was irritated. Why had he left when I had to move my things into his house? He answered the door. You know I have to move my things into your house tonight, I said. What, he asked? I have to move my stuff into your house, I said, the PC director says that at least for now, I have to get my things out of the house in order for us to be able to teach tomorrow. He seemed surprised and reluctant (like maybe then I would never move out). It seemed like he didn't believe me at first and that he wasn't sure if he should let me move my things in. It was very strange. Look, I said, you have to stop fucking thinking about yourself for a second. I was furious. Hey, were on the same side, he said. To myself I was thinking, then why on earth would you be so unprofessional as to say we can move in together, and then, oh, no we can't…you should have just said from the beginning that we couldn't you retard.

I moved my things into my site mate's house. The house smelled bad beyond tolerance. He had a cat and the cat box smell was putrid. Unbearable. Volunteers shouldn't really keep pets in Mozambique. There is no cat litter available to buy so you have to use dirt. And that means you need to change the dirt every day in order to avoid bad smells. My site mate must have changed the dirt once a month. My site mate helped Damiao and I take the first few loads of things. I was throwing things in boxes. My site mate, after this 5th or 6th trip, told me he was going to bed. Damiao and I finished up. I got some of my clothes and Damiao and I went to his house. The next morning, my site mate and I were called to the school director's office and asked if we had moved in with each other as PC had said we would. Yes, we said. Then you can teach, said the school director, handing me a schedule.

It was a new schedule. I was teaching 3 classes of 8th grade, which meant I taught less than nine hours a week. Before I had taught two sections of 10th grade and four sections of 9th grade, almost eighteen hours of teaching. Oh god, I thought, here we go, it continues. I was trying to be a good sport, but I felt helpless. My site mate was weird and PC was offering no field support. Every time I went to the office and tried to ask them about things, I didn't get the kind of help I needed. I went and asked the PC deputy director straight out what she thought of things and what she felt my options would be. I remember asking her before I moved my things into my site mate's house what she thought would happen. I think things will be fine, she said, and you'll be able to stay where you are in your house. It showed how off PC was about the situation and how they misunderstood the seriousness of the situation. I also needed someone to say straight out: man, I know this stuff going on is screwed up, hang in there.

The following weekend, on a Sunday, I went into my site mate's and my house (he was at church) to get some of my things. I heard meowing but I couldn't find where it was coming from. My site mate's cat had had kittens. He had given away about four and still had two. I opened my bedroom door and heard the meowing more loudly and realized it was coming from my closet. I opened the closet doors and the cat and its kittens were closed inside a drawer. My site mate had put his cat and its kittens in a drawer in my closet in my room. I was furious. Why on earth would he, first of all, do this to animals. Secondly, why did he go in my room. Third, what person in their right mind would think this would be cool with their roommate. Oh, hey, yeah, sure, you can put your cats in the drawer of my closet, cool.

My site mate came home from church and came to Damiao's door to ask for something. While he was at the door I asked him angrily why he put the cats in my closet. Oh, he said laughing, because I didn't want them to be out walking in the house. I don't understand this. He couldn't close them in his room? Or put them in the hall closet? Or the bathroom? No, he had to choose a drawer in the closet in my room.

The following week I was sick, as usual. Again diarrhea. But this time I had tissue and blood with my stool. I was tense and worried. After I had moved my things into my site mate's house, I had gone to live at Damiao's. So I was at Damiao's when I saw that I had the blood and tissue in my stool and I went to the other house, that I had with my site mate, to get my PC medical book and my MIF kit (you use MIF kits to collect stool samples). I couldn't find my PC medical booklet anywhere. I looked all over my room, everywhere. I left the house to check my things at Damiao's, maybe it was there, it wasn't. I returned to the other house again. I looked again, and again. I was so frustrated. I finally went into the dining room to see if maybe I could find my site mate's medical booklet. And there on the chair I saw my medical booklet. He had gone in my room and gotten my book.

I'm the kind of person who likes their space and I don't like my things touched. I don't like people just going in my room and helping themselves to my things and I don't do this to other people. So this didn't go over well. I told my site mate I wanted the key to my bedroom and that he gave me no choice but to lock my bedroom door. Looking back at it now, it seems silly that I did that. But his lack of respect for my privacy was so irritating and I was so ticked that he helped himself to entering my room, helped himself to my book, that I felt like locking my door was the only way to avoid further problems.

My morale was as low as could be at this point. Training had been disorganized without leadership, volunteers attacking one another or talking over one another. My school director was crazy, and my site mate was weird. I felt isolated and freaked out. My Portuguese was terrible because I couldn't find the energy and motivation to study. The only thing getting me through was my boyfriend, Damiao, and his family, and the fact that I enjoyed teaching and enjoyed my students.

After I finished collecting stool samples for the MIF kit, I called the then PC nurse to ask her when I should come in and I burst out crying, so unhappy. She booked me a hotel room for two nights and I left for Maputo that afternoon. I told the nurse how I was feeling, and about my site mate putting the cat in my closet. She already knew about the problems I was having with my school director. I remember the night I was sworn in, at the party she said to me, good luck, Rebekah, your school director is crazy but just try not to let it get to you. I remember being concerned because if a PC nurse is telling you this about your school director, I assumed it's not a good sign. On top of that, the week of swearing in, school directors came from all the schools for a conference. Only my school director didn't come. I was the only volunteer without representation from my school-and my school was only an hour away!

The PC nurse told me that I had rights as a volunteer and PC had broken their end of the contract by not having housing for me. She told me that I had the right to ask for a transfer of service and to leave for another country. At this time I had already met Damiao and I felt strongly enough about him that I wouldn't think of leaving. Leaving wasn't an option. Had I not met Damiao, I would have opted to leave because training had been a disaster, and things at my site were crazy.

In early April we had our first in-service training conference. I talked with a couple of other volunteers during it and concluded that I should ask to leave Moamba. As one volunteer put it, while we've had strange experiences, you've had bad experiences and you need to get yourself out of there. During the conference, I asked PC to meet with me so we could talk about what they thought about what was going on with me at site and to talk about my options. I wanted to hear their opinion on things and I needed some guidance. I asked them to meet with me three different times, twice I asked the deputy director, once the director. They never met with me. So I wrote a note explaining that I wanted to leave the school and asked that they request that the provincial director transfer me as she had offered to do if I wanted to transfer.

Even though the school director finally had the house, the problems continued. On one occasion, one of my students, Said, whose picture is on the web site where he's in the basketball hoop, came to Damiao's house to see a photo album of pictures I took of the students. I showed him the pictures and then he asked if I had pictures of my friends and family and if he could see them. First he had to go eat lunch so he ran off and 15 minutes later was back, still swallowing his food. He had brought pictures of his family and I brought out pictures of my family. We sat outside the house, along the walkway. A couple more students came over and we sat together looking at pictures. The school director passed and began yelling at us, yelling at the students, yelling at me. I was mortified. I had no idea we couldn't sit along the walkway where we were sitting. And even if we couldn't, why couldn't she calmly walk over and explain that we should sit along the main corridor, and not the walkway of teacher housing? Why did she have to bellow and yell and scream. The students rushed away and I turned around and went into the house. An hour later Damiao came into the house, having finished classes, and I told him what happened. I was upset and offended. The school director called Damiao on his cell phone shortly after that and asked him to come to her office. She called him in to tell him that she saw students in his house and what did he have to say about it. Hmmmm, he said, and that was all he said. The students were never in the house. She had begun to pick on Damiao more and more and I was getting anxious about it. She was only picking on him because she had problems with my site mate and I and he was friends with my site mate and involved with me.

On a second occasion, my site mate had decided he was going to go to Maputo on a Saturday when we had a staff meeting. He had asked Damiao if he thought it would be a problem, if he would miss anything important. Damiao told him do what you have to do. On Monday, the school director asked my site mate where he had been. My site mate said Maputo. She asked why he hadn't informed anyone. So my site mate mentioned that he had told Damiao that he was planning on going to Maputo. Good job. So Damiao got called into the office and was asked why he didn't tell her that my site mate was going to Maputo. Damiao's reaction was that it never occurred to him that he should. It became more common where the school director started picking on Damiao because he was friends with my site mate and I. So what was already really bad, became even worse.

In April, I was waiting to get the transferal to another school. There were little incidents that were happening all the time, small things that made me all the more ready to escape the atmosphere of the school. I was afraid of where the transfer would be to, because I didn't want to be far from Damiao. There had been a tragedy at our school that month. A student had become pregnant and tried to terminate the baby by taking a bunch of pills but she ended up overdosing and dying. There was controversy over this because friends of this student said they had gone to the director of the dorms, Victor, several times to tell him the girl was sick and looked bad, but he didn't come. And then when he finally came, it was too late. The morning after, I was supposed to give my students a test. I postponed the exam. I sat in the front of the class, at my desk, looking at the students, some of whom had their faces hidden in their hands or buried in their arms, or sat at their desk in shock and disbelief over the tragedy. You could hear a few girls crying. The students who lived outside of the school had only heard the news that morning. The next week, about 20 students were kicked out of the school because the director discovered they had been paying a guard to let them sleep with each other at night.

When the provincial director received my request for a transfer, where the reason we cited was because my schedule had been changed and I had less than 9 hours teaching every week, she called the school director and asked what was going on at the school, and told the school director that she was giving her political problems (the pedagogical director told Damiao all this). With the death of the student, the expulsion of students and then this, the provincial director wasn't very happy. The director of the district office of education of Moamba called me to his office and asked me why I was leaving. I told him because of housing and the number of classes I had. Surely there must be more than that, he said. Well, I said, call Peace Corps if you have further questions. He pushed for further information, but I was so worried about causing problems for myself, if I complained and explained what was going on, so I kept my mouth shut. I didn't know what the repercussions would be if I were to explain how the school director had been treating me.

Finally, PC called me and told I would be leaving in a week for Casa do Gaiato, in Boane. I was relieved, but also sad, sad that I would leave the students, sad that I wouldn't see Damiao every day. Even more so, I was scared. My experience in Moamba with the school director had been so bad, that I afraid of what I would find in my new school. You don't need to worry, Damiao assured me, that school is like a family. At first I had a hard time feeling comfortable with my new school director because she was a woman and I was afraid that the same things would happen with her as with in Moamba. It didn't help that my new school director was pretty tough with the boys in our school at times, which is necessary. But after a few months, I became more comfortable with her and realized she wasn't going to try to mess with me and manipulate me.

The day that the PC director came to pick me up to take me to my new site, I was an emotional mess. I had been crying all morning. As we were walking to the car, the PC director said to me, "You think you have problems, my wife's BMW has a problem with it's engine and the closest place to get it fixed is in South Africa so the kids are alone at the house [his kids are teenagers]. You know, you never know when there might be a coop." Do I even need to mention the word insensitivity?

When I first arrived at Casa do Gaiato I was really happy. At least at my new school the director was excited about the kids learning English and even had me teaching English to primary school students so they could get early exposure to the language. PCVs taught English to secondary students in 8th, 9th and 10th grade, but I was teaching and testing 6-10, and teaching 2-5 just to orient the students to English. The problem with living in the school was how isolated the school was. To get in and out of the school to the nearest village was a good 15 minute drive, about an hour and a half walk. A bus only came three times a day while school was in session, so if you needed to go somewhere outside of when the bus came to transport students, you had to wait until you got lucky and someone was going to Massaca or Boane. It wasn't a Mozambican community, which is what I had wanted, and, I think, what most PCVs want to live in. I had to experience too much discipline of the boys, heard too much crying. I loved the boys, totally adored them, but it was too much Casa do Gaiato for me. The isolation was also preventing me from getting over the Moamba situation.

PC never asked about alternative housing. They never asked the sister if there was anywhere else I could live. Meanwhile, Casa do Gaiato had a three-bedroom house in Massaca as well as rows of cement houses they build for people who are misplaced by the floods. If PC had requested it, the sister could have offered alternative housing to what I was given, which was a room in one of the houses with the boys. I only found the house that I moved to because another volunteer at the school, Frederico, a pharmacist, was talking to me one afternoon in my room. The sister had brought him to my room because I had been sick, throwing up, and she wanted to see if he could do anything to help me. The Casa do Gaiato nurse was in Nampula helping someone who had broken their leg. Frederico asked me how I could stand to live in the school, since it's like a prison, and said that he was living in Massaca in a house with the carpenter, Jose Alberto. He said there was an extra bedroom and that if I wanted him to, he would ask the sister if I could move in there. It was like a gift from God. I had decided I would leave Mozambique in December because I couldn't handle the isolation of the school. This way, I could stay the second year if I wanted. The sister agreed to my living in the house in Massaca and I moved in the next day.

I didn't notify PC that I was moving after I had moved. The director found out when he came for a site visit. He thought it was great and said that all the staff had been really concerned about my living up in the school because it was so far from anything and it wasn't a normal living situation. I thought to myself, if they had been so concerned, why didn't they ask the sister before I arrived if there was alternative housing. It seemed like PC just wanted my problem off their hands. I had been calling them every week with a new Moamba problem when I lived in Moamba, and now that they had taken me out of Moamba, they just wanted to dump me somewhere and forget me.

I had developed a deep resentment of PC. I would talk to Damiao about things and I was really down on PC. I couldn't believe they didn't offer me more field support. And more so, I couldn't believe they would put another volunteer in a school where they had already known the problems a previous volunteer had had. The school already had a bad reputation. The things that happened to the volunteer I replaced should have warned PC not to place another volunteer at the school. PC assumed that because the school director asked for a girl, she would be happy with me and treat me differently. But that's not what happened. In fact, the treatment was worse. PC could even have asked Trinidad, one of the men who worked with us during training and worked in the Ministry if Education. They could have consulted with him about what he thought of placing another volunteer in the school and he could have told them the school director's reputation. These are things I expected PC to do before sending a volunteer to a site. I also couldn't believe that they would send me to a school, isolated and far from anything, and never ask about alternative housing. It seemed so crazy and unprofessional to me.

By this time, I was so resentful of having had to deal with all these problems myself, that I felt like I might as well be a volunteer there and not a PCV. When you go somewhere in a group, you expect guidance, help and support. But I got none of this. When you join a group like PC, you expect training to be set and for the people leading you to know what they're doing. Our training was a disgrace. You assume that by now, everything is streamlined and fine-tuned because the organization has been running since the 60s. But nothing was what I had thought it would be. Even language training, something that should be so easy, was terrible. The director had volunteers advise him on what they thought should be changed for the next training group. I remember one volunteer commenting to the director: when I was coming into Peace Corps, I was really worried about the language and I was asking RPCVs about it. But people said to me that you guys had been training people for so long, that your language-training program was excellent. But when I got here, our language training was terrible and I don't understand that, I would have thought you guys would know what you were doing.

This is how much of PC worked-you expected that they knew what they were doing, but then it seemed that no one knew what they were doing. It doesn't help either that Congress has a rule that staff can only work for PC in 5 year intervals. How can a country director really know a country and what's going on, and create an effective program, if he or she is changed every 5 years?

I had pretty much had it with PC. I was tolerating the sessions, tolerating the other volunteers. I resented having to live under PC's strict rules and policies when they never gave any help and guidance when I needed it. I felt like I may as well be there as an autonomous unit because my life there did not revolve around PC, like the other volunteers. I had a boyfriend and spent my time with him and his family and his friends. And I felt like I really didn't fit in with other PCVs even more because of this, because I had a life outside of PC.

So this brings me back to what happened last week. When PC found my site and read it, I assume they were as equally angry about the comments about the Moamba school director, as they were offended by my criticisms about PC.

After I had the Monday meeting with the PC staff and they asked me to terminate my service early, the following Wednesday, I had the director sign my description of service, which states that I successfully completed one year of service, etc. He was pleasant, unlike Monday when he didn't even greet me when he saw me. He made an appeal to me that I change some of the things on my web site. I told him I would be more than happy to look at it. But you can't really expect someone to change anything for you when you've caused him or her to resign. That's ridiculous. So, while I plan to look over each entry that they have a problem with, and explain myself, I won't be deleting anything.

I explained during the meeting Monday that my intention was never to offend anyone, rather, to let my family and friends know what was going on in my life-this was the reason for the web site being created. My web site was never created as a media outlet or anything like that.

I have many complaints about PC staff support, and I know that I'm not the only one. I had lunch with another volunteer the day after the bombing started on Afghanistan, back in October. We both remarked about how when you call the PC office and need something, you feel like you're bothering them. That's not a cool feeling when you're completely dependant on an organization that brought you to the country and you're basically helpless.

My friends and family, the people who love me, are ashamed of PC and the dismissal. They are ashamed that in an organization like PC, there's no freedom of speech. They can't believe that by writing my web site, things that were the truth, that PC forced me to resign. They are ashamed of PC because through the whole Moamba situation, PC was not helping me and I was stranded with a situation that was obviously affecting my psyche.

The PC director said I sounded angry throughout my web site. And when I've looked at it, I agree, I sound pretty angry in the web site. But this should cause PC to think about our training and what I was going through in Moamba. Because people don't become angry like that for no reason. I think that now, looking back, while I'm in the safety of my country and the comfort of my home, I can say that the experience was one problem after another. During training, we just had these young kids who were competing with one another for attention, and at times, being pretty nasty. And then, when I was dumped off at site, my problems had only just begun. My PC experience, while I don't regret having done it, was a disappointment. But at the same time, my life outside of PC was definitely not a disappointment, and I created my family, through Damiao, who helped keep me going.

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