After about a week here I was finally picking up the basics of the language. My language teacher, Ilidio, even told me that he noticed I was able to follow some of the conversations. Language will be my small uphill battle for all of training and probably beyond, but baby steps will suffice for now. After our normal day of classes, our afternoon language session became a field trip to the cascata. I had been hearing about the cascata and was looking forward to going. It’s a bit of a hike so I was really happy, I love to hike, and even brought my hiking boots with me to training. We all meet up at the secondary school and headed on our way, there were about 20 people on the trip. It was a nice sunny day, but around here it can start raining in minutes. Equipped with my camera, rain coat and OSU nalgene bottle, I had everything I needed. It didn’t take long for me to realize this was an entirely down hill hike to the cascata, which meant a nice long hike back up hill for the return trip. On the long hike down, took about one hour, I started to feel my strep throat coming back. I had strep throat just before I left Columbus and was on antibiotics. I had finished my antibiotics just the day before the hike and I haven’t been sleeping well. We were warned upon arrival in Mozambique that it is common for people to get sick often, so I wasn’t surprised that my strep found its way back.

The view of the mountains were wonderful the whole trip down. It was just one rolling, green mountain after another. It was just getting ready to start the wet season so things weren’t really growing that well yet and everything still seemed so green. As I started getting closer to the cascata, I could see the water that fed into the cascata. There were large areas with multiple pools of water in stone and dark marks where it was clear the water runs much higher during the wet season. This did not give me the idea that the cascata was going to be over flowing when I got there. As I did approach the cascata I was glad to be able to rest, it was really hot and I was in need of some water. The cascata was nothing more than a trickle. There were actually two separate trickles, and the markings of where the cascata normally flows during the wet season. The water looked great to jump into and cool off but the PCMO, PC Med Officer, would kill me. A lot of fresh water in Mozambique, and many other places in the world, have Schistosomiasis, a nasty little parasite that is really easy to treat. I know jumping into any fresh water during PST is just asking for trouble, I’ll at least wait until I’m a PCV to get in trouble with the PCMO. There was another little pond just downstream of the cascata were some locals were swimming. As our language teachers told us, the locals are immune to Schisto so they can go swimming wherever they want.
After a little prep session for our trip to Maputo the next day, it was back up hill to home. By this time I was really worn down and tired, my strep was clearly coming back for round two. I was just taking my good old time walking back up and so were a few other people. Another PCT had spent the whole day and night sick so she wasn’t feeling good either. We had made it most of the way up when we ran into another language teacher. He was wondering how much longer down to the cascata it would be. Once he realized it was quite a bit longer he told us that a PCT had sprained her ankle and they had to call the PC truck to come get her. The PC truck drove by us going down but I wanted to catch it on the trip back up. Sure enough on the trip up we were able to catch a ride. We got a ride to the mercado and saved about 30-45 min of hiking. The evening came to a nice close with everyone coming together for a little socializing in the mercado and getting ready for the exciting day in Maputo.