May 24th, 2017

It’s been a week since I arrived here in Beira and I’m starting to settle into a bit of a rhythm. I initially found the adjustment quite challenging but I‘m already beginning to feel more comfortable in my surroundings.

I know what you’re probably wondering right now, so before going any further I’ll just go ahead and tell you what I’m doing Mozambique. I’m here as an intern working on a research project led by a professor at U of M. Basically, the project has two sides. The first side of the project is centered around economic, education, and health HIV interventions in households with orphans and vulnerable children. The other side (the one that I’m involved in) is evaluating the impacts of the aforementioned interventions. This involves surveying the local population on a variety of indicators and monitoring whether their conditions improve relative to the control group over a period of several years. The structure of this project is cool because it allows the interventions to be effectively monitored over time. This means that if the interventions work, similar interventions could potentially be used in other parts of Mozambique (or neighboring countries.) Conversely, it could be a signal that things need to be tweaked if the interventions are not helping target communities.

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect before I arrived in Mozambique. Because I had no expectations to gauge my experiences against, I can’t say that I’ve been particularly surprised by much of what I’ve seen so far. The one exception is the language/accent here in Mozambique. The Portuguese here is quite different from the one that I spent so much time trying to learn before arriving. Despite this, I feel like I’m already starting to pick up more words each day and hopefully by August I’ll be able to communicate effectively on my own!

I’ve already met a bunch of really great people from all over the world since I’ve been in Beira and I’m excited for the journey ahead of me. I’ll try to update this blog semi-regularly with actual details on my life but for now I’ll keep this first post (somewhat) short.

✌🏽✌🏽✌🏽

June 18th, 2017

I’m more than a third of the way through my time here in Mozambique and I have no idea where the time has gone. The first month has absolutely flown by and I’ve been able to learn a lot.

Dean Yang, the professor whose project I’m working on this summer was here in Beira last week visiting the project. Throughout the week professor Yang allowed me to tag along as he took many visits to different project sites and met with those in charge of implementing the interventions that we will be evaluating. These visits were especially surreal as they gave me a clearer picture of the conditions that some people are forced to endure and kind of gave me a reminder of why I’m actually here as well as why I’m pursuing the career that I am. We also were able to visit a couple schools where interventions were being implemented. That was cool because not only did we get to interact with a bunch of interested and surprised little kids, but we also saw a couple more examples of what schools look like in rural and semi-urban areas. I also got the chance to catch up with professor Yang a bit and he gave me some invaluable career advice.

On one of his first nights in Beira, the whole project went to a great seafood restaurant called Anselmos. I found out after the fact that apparently Anthony Bourdain had visited before and thought it was awesome. I’ve been lucky to have some great seafood in my life but this was probably the best that I’ve ever had. Everything was incredible but the prawns, which were about the size of my forearm, truly blew me away. I included a picture of some (but not all) of the food we ate on that glorious night.

I also moved to a new apartment about 10 days ago that is right by the ocean. Unfortunately, it’s not really possible to swim in the beach here in Beira but it’s still great to hear the waves all day. Another cool thing about this apartment is that we get to see the sunset over the water every day on account of being on a bay.

One thing that has really stood out to me so far in my experience here in Mozambique often I am an outsider. My dual identity has meant I’ve been in similar situations my entire life but never has it been more obvious than it is in Mozambique. For one, I don’t physically stick out in Egypt or in the United States for somewhat obvious reasons. Furthermore, although my Portuguese is coming along, the language barrier often still significantly hinders some of my daily interactions. My differences are especially obvious when I go on field visits to observe the data collection process because people who look like me aren’t particularly common in rural, or even semi-urban, Mozambique.

However, I need to clear that everyone I’ve met here has made me feel incredibly welcome. Even complete strangers are quick to joke, laugh, and help out whenever necessary. Given Mozambique’s long and miserable colonial history, it’s remarkable to me that Mozambicans have none of the suspicion and disdain for outsiders that is unfortunately so pervasive in the United States and Egypt. The government, however, seems to be slightly less welcoming. While I won’t get into details of how and why, I think that much of Mozambique’s history post-independence makes the government’s wariness totally understandable and even justifiable.

Until next time,

Moustafa

July 14th, 2017

It’s hard to believe it’s been almost a month since I last posted but the time has really flown by! I only have around 3 weeks left here in Mozambique and I’m sitting here trying to figure out where the time has gone.

Language wise, my Portuguese has certainly been improving since I’ve been here and I’d like to keep learning upon my return to the US. Surprisingly, the bigger challenge for me has generally been understanding different Portuguese accents as Mozambicans, Brazilians, and the Portuguese all speak very different dialects of Portuguese. Brazilian Portuguese is the most similar to Spanish, which I already speak, so I’ve found it easiest to communicate in Portuguese with the Brazilians that I’ve met. My Portuguese isn’t quite to the standard that I expected it to be at this point in my trip, but I’ve certainly made progress and I would like to keep this momentum going through the rest of my time here and beyond.

As I briefly touched on last time, my time in Mozambique has helped me put many things into perspective. I’m extremely blessed to have had parents who did their utmost to help me understand just how fortunate I am and to be aware that billions around the world don’t have much of what I’ve always taken for granted. However, there is a difference between knowing a fact and witnessing the reality first-hand. While I’ve long known that the majority of the challenges that I face in my daily life are trivial, that fact really hit home when I saw kids whose malnourishment causes their bellies to bloat and their hair to fall out. I feel as though I’ve been able to refocus on what I find to be truly important and I hope that I’ll be able to keep these lessons for the rest of my life.

I’m too lazy to think of a transition between topics so this will have to serve for now.

Just over a week ago I had to go to South Africa to renew my Mozambican visa. I decided to take a long weekend and make a trip out of it and go on a safari in the famous Kruger National Park. The trip was incredible and one of my favorite places I’ve ever been to. I was initially hesitant to travel on my own as I thought it might be lonely but it was actually a great experience. My guide was kind, knowledge, and funny and the others on the safari with me were really nice. We also got to see almost every animal possible! As expected saw countless zebras, giraffes, elephants, and buffalo. However, we also saw ten lions, two jackals, some (very rare) African wild dogs, four cheetahs, and much more! Seeing so much relatively untouched wildlife was incredible. While in Kruger I learned that only 3% of the park’s surface area is covered by roads and/or camps! That means that there’s probably so much in the unexplored parts of the park that hasn’t been seen. Another really cool part of this trip was that I had pretty much no contact with the outside world because I didn’t have a South African sim card and the camps we were staying at had no WiFi. Because I also had my own room and row in the safari vehicle, I was able to do a lot of self reflection during this trip.

On my way to and from Kruger I spent some time in Johannesburg, which was a really cool city. I went to the restaurant called Pata Pata (named after the famous song by Miriam Makeba.) Pata Pata’s food was really good and quite cheap but what I really enjoyed about the place was the live band that was playing. The music and the vibes were both great and I definitely plan on going back whenever I’m in Johannesburg in the future. It was also pretty cool to see this restaurant called Pata Pata because I learned about Miriam Makeba last semester in a modern African history class so it was really interesting to see her legacy is still alive and will in the city of Johannesburg where she’s from.

Yesterday I also booked my flight to Cape Town at the end of my trip. I’ve heard nothing but great things about the Western Cape and I’m incredibly excited! I will also get to see my good friend Peter who I haven’t really spent time with since December. It’s strange to see the end of my time in Mozambique approaching, but I’m excited for what lies ahead the rest of this summer.

Some pictures from the past couple weeks!

Moustafa

July 20th, 2017

When I first became interested in development economics, I was taken aback by the idea that many of the global poor are stuck in a “poverty trap.” Essentially this means that, at any given time, the extreme poor often have only enough resources to survive rather than to plan for the future, thus rendering improvement of quality of life through saving, investment, and education impossible. This argument makes a lot of sense for why billions of people are still stuck in the depths of poverty despite our world being in a time of unprecedented prosperity. Since famous and brilliant economists were the ones peddling the poverty trap to anyone who would listen, I figured it must be profound. Little did I know that it’d be a reality that became almost immediately evident upon spending time here in Mozambique.

This realization is part of what made this trip such a tremendous learning experience professionally. I’m getting practical experience working on projects that I’d previously been exposed to in books and papers.

That’s all for this time.

August 13th, 2017

I’m officially done with my summer in Mozambique. It was an incredible experience in so many ways and I’m so lucky to have met so many wonderful people and learned so many lessons. I’m thankful for the opportunity and my time in Mozambique will stay with me for a long time yet.

After finishing up my internship, I visited Cape Town for a couple days. My good friend Peter is studying abroad at UCT this semester so I got to spend some time with him while I was in the city. Cape Town is an aesthetically beautiful city with a complicated and often dark history. I’d definitely like to visit Cape Town again in the future as I absolutely loved it. Traveling on my own was also a very interesting experience. Although it occasionally got slightly lonely, I generally enjoyed it a lot because I could do whatever I wanted without checking with anyone first. Since I spent 6 days in the city, I could also take my time while traveling which made my vacation much more relaxing. After leaving Cape Town, I went back to Egypt to visit my family.

It’s so great to be back with my parents and all of my extended family. I’ve got a pretty busy schedule while I’m here so this will be my last post. It was a great summer and I’m excited to take the lessons I’ve learned with me into the future!

✌🏽✌🏽