So pretty much the biggest part of PST, aside from Swearing In, is site placement. This is the time where all PCTs find out where they will be going to live for the next two years. The sites are decided by PC staff and it doesn’t appear to have any known system of how they place PCTs. It’s been thought by a lot that PC staff actually gets a map of Mozambique, write PCTs names on darts, then blindly throw the darts at the map and whichever city is closest to the dart is the city that PCT is going to. Needless to say some people are very happy with where they end up and others are very sad. Some PC countries have fun and exciting ways of finding out where you are going to placed, while Moz just gives you a white envelope with your info inside and tells all the PCTs to open them at the same time. This year the idea was brought up to do something more exciting. We came up with the idea to have a giant map of Mozambique on the floor, blindfold all the PCTs then have the PC staff place us in our provinces and gives us our envelopes. This way when we all take off our blindfolds at the same time, we see who all our neighbors are going to be. As one PC staff member put it, if someone isn’t in your region you probably won’t see them again and hardly ever talk to them. All the Education PCTs wanted to do the blindfolding but the Health PCTs were freaking out and couldn’t handle the blindfolding so PC staff scrapped it and just gave us white envelopes. After we opened out envelopes we walked to our places on the map to see who all was where.
I got placed in Tete Province. I’m going to be opening a new site by myself, so it should be a lot of fun and I’m excited. There are currently only four PCVs in Tete and they are expanding it to nine PCVs now! Seven Moz15 PCTs are going there and two PCVs are COSing, so they are being replaced. Tete is well known in Mozambique as the hottest place in the country. It’s usually about 115 degrees during the summer time in Tete City! Luckily I’m away from the city and in the mountains a little bit, so it only gets to be about 100 degrees. During my interviews with PC staff for placement I told them I don’t like the heat and would rather be high in the mountains where it gets really cold, but I got Tete. There was a joke at the very beginning of PST that there are only two letters in Tete, E and T. ET is short for Early Termination, which is what PC calls when people choose to leave before the end of their service. I think I sealed my fate long before this. I thought it would be funny to make Tete synonymous with Hell since it’s so hot. I would always say things like “It’s hot as Tete” or “You have a snowballs chance in Tete.” I was determined to get it stick amongst the Moz 15ers and it appears people now like using it more since I’ve been placed there. On the good side of things I don’t have to worry about trying to buy an oven, I can just cook things on the rocks outside my place. Now I just hope I don’t spontaneously combust!