Name: Abby Peeters
Age: 24
Hometown: Eldridge, Iowa
Primary Job: Community Health Outreach
Site: Chitima, Tete
Secondary Projects: Grassroots Soccer, English Theater, Malaria Task Force
1. Where did you go to school/study? Short background leading up to Peace Corps!
I graduated from the University of Iowa in 2015 with a Bachelor’s degree in Social Work, a Bachelor’s in Studio Art, and a certificate in American Indian and Native Studies. During my time in school I was activity involved with our Native American Student Association and Ceramic Society, and worked in a variety of positions with aging adults, aging adults with Alzheimers and Dementia, and differently abled individuals. Prior to joining Peace Corps, I volunteered with an organization working in Haiti (ServeHAITI) for around 5 years and completed my Social Work practicum in their rural medical clinic. I really enjoyed my time spent there with them, but I felt like I was reaching a point in both my professional and personal life where I had given them all I could. It was time to push myself and grow in a field that I’m passionate about, and when a friend who works for Peace Corps encouraged me to apply for an upcoming deadline, it felt like the right thing to do! Less than two months after that conversation, I had declined a prior offer to teach high school English in Mississippi with Teach For America, and had accepted an offer to serve in Mozambique.
2. Why did you want to join PC?
Like you’ll hear from many other Peace Corps or Returned Peace Corps Volunteers, joining Peace Corps was something I had always thought about but never seriously considered. In many ways, it seemed beyond my reach or unattainable. I had first started considering it sometime around junior high, and I think the idea continued to grow and grow until it became larger than life—some big dream I would always have. As I continued on with my studies and travels, I realized that Peace Corps was very much attainable.
3. Describe your site/house/living situation.
I live in a little yellow cement house in what’s known as a dependência—a unit in a common yard shared with other homes. In my situation, my house sits nestled between the homes of my landlady and her kids plus two other rental units. The compound is surrounded by a cement wall and situated tightly in the middle of our neighborhood…so tightly that I can take about 5-10 steps in any direction, both inside and outside of our yard, and arrive at a neighbor’s house. Inside our yard, which in Portuguese is called a quintal, we share a laundry space, a common cement patio, and an outdoor bathroom. I am the first health volunteer in Chitima, so I moved into a totally empty house (seriously, think three empty blue rooms, 12 blank walls) with about $120 USD to fill it up with all the things I needed—pots, pans, water storage, shelves, seating, the list could go on. While we’re all lucky to have fairly reliable electricity, our water situation is a little different. There’s no running water in any of our homes, and as of about a year ago water access to most of the pumps and spigots in our neighborhood was cut off by the government; now, water for drinking, cooking, bathing, washing, you name it, is either carted from the river about 0.5km away or collected during rainstorms and stored in large barrels or jerrycans. No running water also means that the shower is really just 4 cement walls (no ceiling) with a drain in the floor where we take bucket baths, and the toilet uses a dump flush system. For those not familiar, a “dump flush” is a toilet bowl cemented over a pit latrine using the force/gravity from buckets of water poured in to flush away waste. However, because I have electricity, that means I get to have luxuries like a fan and an electric stovetop. These may sound small, but they are total game changers. Having a fan is about the only thing that keeps me sane during Tete summers when daily temperatures soar to above 105ºF and don’t drop below 80º until 10pm. The stovetop keeps me sane in different ways, providing me with the distraction of cooking when days are slow or with a fast meal when I’m tired and hungry. There’s nothing worse than trying to light a charcoal fire for cooking when you’re hangry and want to eat ASAP.
4. What is your favorite PC activity?
I’ve really enjoyed running a program called GRS, or Grassroot Soccer. It’s based out of a separate organization in South Africa that partners with Peace Corps to deliver targeted messages about HIV to youths and adolescents through soccer. A counterpart and I attended a GRS training in September and have since had 4 different groups of kids participate in the 12-session HIV program and a shorter program focused on malaria. We meet twice a week to play small games and do soccer-based activities that encourage healthy decision making and promote key messages on HIV transmission and prevention. We started with a small group of 5 students, but the program was so popular that we’ve had kids request and form groups themselves! It’s been a lot of fun to watch everyone get so excited about GRS and see how much they learn over a short period of time.
5. What is one thing you want Americans to know about Moz?
Mozambique is an incredibly beautiful and geographically diverse country. It’s also a lot more “developed” than most people expect. Not everyone is living in mud houses down dirt roads with no electricity…there are actually a lot of big cities and tall buildings, mid-sized towns with paved roads and established markets, and cellphones everywhere you look. We have beaches, mountains, dry sandy expanses, and tropical green areas, and each region has its own language, customs and norms, and food. Come visit! You’ll be hard-pressed to find a place as welcoming and hospitable as Mozambique.
6. What parts of service have you found most challenging?
It can be really hard to constantly feel like you have to “prove” yourself, especially as a woman. My greatest challenges have come from feeling like an outsider or feeling as though my opinions are not as valued because of who I am. These predispositions from colleagues or community members often don’t present themselves in big moments or gestures, but in micro-aggressions and off-handed actions. Orations that start with “é assim../it’s like this…” that assume you don’t understand the situation. A man or person with more authority who interrupts you in the middle of a sentence, never giving you the chance to complete your thought. People who constantly call you “azungo/foreigner or white person” without ever bothering to try and remember your name. Not being asked to participate in meetings or events because it’s assumed that you’re incapable or uninterested. However, while this has been difficult and honestly exhausting, it is still humbling; I maintain a certain level of privilege through out it all, knowing that I will soon be returning to the United States where some of this will be alleviated…for a lot of people, this kind of treatment is a constant reality.
7. What parts have you found most rewarding?
I’m surrounded by really phenomenal people: community members, coworkers, Peace Corps Volunteers. They’re constantly showing me what it means to work hard, find beauty in the every-day, and make the most out of life. I wake up almost every morning excited about all the potential the day has to offer, and I find myself constantly inspired. I don’t think I’ve passed a single day here in Mozambique where I haven’t been totally amazed by something I’ve seen or experienced— be it a person, an event, a landscape, you name it. How incredible is that?
8. Do you have a student/friend highlight?
This is Cândida Candido. She was my host-mom during Phase 2 of training and is now my landlady and life’s inspiration. Although born in Chitima, she spent most of her childhood years in nearby Songo while her dad worked in construction with the crews building the Cahora Bassa Dam (his is an impressive story in itself). She married young and moved to Zimbabwe to find work while the civil war was raging in Mozambique. When she returned to Chitima nearly 8 years later, she separated from her husband—she says she realized her own worth and was not going to waste her time nor energy on a man who couldn’t and wouldn’t support her. She went back to her childhood home as a single woman, worked hard and saved her money, bought a neighboring parcel of land, and built an amazing compound to house not only herself and her own children, but the orphaned children of both her older and younger siblings. I can’t say enough about this woman. Though technically my landlady, Cândida is my rock here in Chitima. She’s everyone’s cool mom. Before meeting her for the first time, I was told that she is “gorda e força” in other words, “big (fat) and strong”…I now understand that comment was in reference to both her physical stature and the content of her character. Confident, kind and hilarious, Cândida is one of the best people I’ve ever met. My days would not be the same if they didn’t include conversation and laughs with Cândida over a cup of tea, a shared meal, or a cold beer.
9. Lastly, FOOD! What’s your favorite or go to meal in Moz?
A friend of mine in Chitima owns a little restaurant called Centro Social. Over the years, it’s become a sort of second home for PCVs in the area and our designated meeting point when anyone comes to town. Their Prato de Bife (plate of beef) rocks my world— think beef cutlets in some type of sauce or curry served with a pile of rice, some hot greasy fries, and a cabbage/tomato/onion side salad. And all for about $2 USD (unless you want a beer with your meal, and let’s be honest I always do, which makes it about $3 USD). I really enjoy cooking and cook a lot at home, but I eat at Centro more than I’d like to admit…probably once a week. It was even on the list of “must-do” activities when my family visited Mozambique.
10. Post Peace Corps?
My service is sadly coming to a close in July, so I have some pretty big travel plans for my post COS adventure home. I’ll be meeting up with a slew of newly-dubbed RPCVs and a few friends from the States as I pinball from Maputo to South Africa, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Australia and maybe a few other stops along the way. I’m not planning on setting foot on U.S. soil until early September, when I will most likely stay in Iowa for a few months before continuing on to a public health-esque position in Haiti
Age: 24
Hometown: Eldridge, Iowa
Primary Job: Community Health Outreach
Site: Chitima, Tete
Secondary Projects: Grassroots Soccer, English Theater, Malaria Task Force
1. Where did you go to school/study? Short background leading up to Peace Corps!
I graduated from the University of Iowa in 2015 with a Bachelor’s degree in Social Work, a Bachelor’s in Studio Art, and a certificate in American Indian and Native Studies. During my time in school I was activity involved with our Native American Student Association and Ceramic Society, and worked in a variety of positions with aging adults, aging adults with Alzheimers and Dementia, and differently abled individuals. Prior to joining Peace Corps, I volunteered with an organization working in Haiti (ServeHAITI) for around 5 years and completed my Social Work practicum in their rural medical clinic. I really enjoyed my time spent there with them, but I felt like I was reaching a point in both my professional and personal life where I had given them all I could. It was time to push myself and grow in a field that I’m passionate about, and when a friend who works for Peace Corps encouraged me to apply for an upcoming deadline, it felt like the right thing to do! Less than two months after that conversation, I had declined a prior offer to teach high school English in Mississippi with Teach For America, and had accepted an offer to serve in Mozambique.
2. Why did you want to join PC?
Like you’ll hear from many other Peace Corps or Returned Peace Corps Volunteers, joining Peace Corps was something I had always thought about but never seriously considered. In many ways, it seemed beyond my reach or unattainable. I had first started considering it sometime around junior high, and I think the idea continued to grow and grow until it became larger than life—some big dream I would always have. As I continued on with my studies and travels, I realized that Peace Corps was very much attainable.
3. Describe your site/house/living situation.
I live in a little yellow cement house in what’s known as a dependência—a unit in a common yard shared with other homes. In my situation, my house sits nestled between the homes of my landlady and her kids plus two other rental units. The compound is surrounded by a cement wall and situated tightly in the middle of our neighborhood…so tightly that I can take about 5-10 steps in any direction, both inside and outside of our yard, and arrive at a neighbor’s house. Inside our yard, which in Portuguese is called a quintal, we share a laundry space, a common cement patio, and an outdoor bathroom. I am the first health volunteer in Chitima, so I moved into a totally empty house (seriously, think three empty blue rooms, 12 blank walls) with about $120 USD to fill it up with all the things I needed—pots, pans, water storage, shelves, seating, the list could go on. While we’re all lucky to have fairly reliable electricity, our water situation is a little different. There’s no running water in any of our homes, and as of about a year ago water access to most of the pumps and spigots in our neighborhood was cut off by the government; now, water for drinking, cooking, bathing, washing, you name it, is either carted from the river about 0.5km away or collected during rainstorms and stored in large barrels or jerrycans. No running water also means that the shower is really just 4 cement walls (no ceiling) with a drain in the floor where we take bucket baths, and the toilet uses a dump flush system. For those not familiar, a “dump flush” is a toilet bowl cemented over a pit latrine using the force/gravity from buckets of water poured in to flush away waste. However, because I have electricity, that means I get to have luxuries like a fan and an electric stovetop. These may sound small, but they are total game changers. Having a fan is about the only thing that keeps me sane during Tete summers when daily temperatures soar to above 105ºF and don’t drop below 80º until 10pm. The stovetop keeps me sane in different ways, providing me with the distraction of cooking when days are slow or with a fast meal when I’m tired and hungry. There’s nothing worse than trying to light a charcoal fire for cooking when you’re hangry and want to eat ASAP.
4. What is your favorite PC activity?
I’ve really enjoyed running a program called GRS, or Grassroot Soccer. It’s based out of a separate organization in South Africa that partners with Peace Corps to deliver targeted messages about HIV to youths and adolescents through soccer. A counterpart and I attended a GRS training in September and have since had 4 different groups of kids participate in the 12-session HIV program and a shorter program focused on malaria. We meet twice a week to play small games and do soccer-based activities that encourage healthy decision making and promote key messages on HIV transmission and prevention. We started with a small group of 5 students, but the program was so popular that we’ve had kids request and form groups themselves! It’s been a lot of fun to watch everyone get so excited about GRS and see how much they learn over a short period of time.
5. What is one thing you want Americans to know about Moz?
Mozambique is an incredibly beautiful and geographically diverse country. It’s also a lot more “developed” than most people expect. Not everyone is living in mud houses down dirt roads with no electricity…there are actually a lot of big cities and tall buildings, mid-sized towns with paved roads and established markets, and cellphones everywhere you look. We have beaches, mountains, dry sandy expanses, and tropical green areas, and each region has its own language, customs and norms, and food. Come visit! You’ll be hard-pressed to find a place as welcoming and hospitable as Mozambique.
6. What parts of service have you found most challenging?
It can be really hard to constantly feel like you have to “prove” yourself, especially as a woman. My greatest challenges have come from feeling like an outsider or feeling as though my opinions are not as valued because of who I am. These predispositions from colleagues or community members often don’t present themselves in big moments or gestures, but in micro-aggressions and off-handed actions. Orations that start with “é assim../it’s like this…” that assume you don’t understand the situation. A man or person with more authority who interrupts you in the middle of a sentence, never giving you the chance to complete your thought. People who constantly call you “azungo/foreigner or white person” without ever bothering to try and remember your name. Not being asked to participate in meetings or events because it’s assumed that you’re incapable or uninterested. However, while this has been difficult and honestly exhausting, it is still humbling; I maintain a certain level of privilege through out it all, knowing that I will soon be returning to the United States where some of this will be alleviated…for a lot of people, this kind of treatment is a constant reality.
7. What parts have you found most rewarding?
I’m surrounded by really phenomenal people: community members, coworkers, Peace Corps Volunteers. They’re constantly showing me what it means to work hard, find beauty in the every-day, and make the most out of life. I wake up almost every morning excited about all the potential the day has to offer, and I find myself constantly inspired. I don’t think I’ve passed a single day here in Mozambique where I haven’t been totally amazed by something I’ve seen or experienced— be it a person, an event, a landscape, you name it. How incredible is that?
8. Do you have a student/friend highlight?
This is Cândida Candido. She was my host-mom during Phase 2 of training and is now my landlady and life’s inspiration. Although born in Chitima, she spent most of her childhood years in nearby Songo while her dad worked in construction with the crews building the Cahora Bassa Dam (his is an impressive story in itself). She married young and moved to Zimbabwe to find work while the civil war was raging in Mozambique. When she returned to Chitima nearly 8 years later, she separated from her husband—she says she realized her own worth and was not going to waste her time nor energy on a man who couldn’t and wouldn’t support her. She went back to her childhood home as a single woman, worked hard and saved her money, bought a neighboring parcel of land, and built an amazing compound to house not only herself and her own children, but the orphaned children of both her older and younger siblings. I can’t say enough about this woman. Though technically my landlady, Cândida is my rock here in Chitima. She’s everyone’s cool mom. Before meeting her for the first time, I was told that she is “gorda e força” in other words, “big (fat) and strong”…I now understand that comment was in reference to both her physical stature and the content of her character. Confident, kind and hilarious, Cândida is one of the best people I’ve ever met. My days would not be the same if they didn’t include conversation and laughs with Cândida over a cup of tea, a shared meal, or a cold beer.
9. Lastly, FOOD! What’s your favorite or go to meal in Moz?
A friend of mine in Chitima owns a little restaurant called Centro Social. Over the years, it’s become a sort of second home for PCVs in the area and our designated meeting point when anyone comes to town. Their Prato de Bife (plate of beef) rocks my world— think beef cutlets in some type of sauce or curry served with a pile of rice, some hot greasy fries, and a cabbage/tomato/onion side salad. And all for about $2 USD (unless you want a beer with your meal, and let’s be honest I always do, which makes it about $3 USD). I really enjoy cooking and cook a lot at home, but I eat at Centro more than I’d like to admit…probably once a week. It was even on the list of “must-do” activities when my family visited Mozambique.
10. Post Peace Corps?
My service is sadly coming to a close in July, so I have some pretty big travel plans for my post COS adventure home. I’ll be meeting up with a slew of newly-dubbed RPCVs and a few friends from the States as I pinball from Maputo to South Africa, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Australia and maybe a few other stops along the way. I’m not planning on setting foot on U.S. soil until early September, when I will most likely stay in Iowa for a few months before continuing on to a public health-esque position in Haiti
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