I spent my summer in Beira, Mozambique working on research to evaluate the impacts of different health, economic, and educational HIV interventions for orphans and vulnerable children. This was my first time in a developing country besides Egypt where my family is all from and it was a completely new experience. I’m pursuing a career in development so it was awesome to get first-hand experience working in Mozambique while having to adapt to a completely new culture, language, and environment. I’ve spent the last several years reading various economics and political science papers so it was really cool to see and participate in the process of actually conducting the experiments that these papers are written about. I managed to learn a bit of Portuguese while I was in Mozambique so by the end of my 3 months in Mozambique I could communicate with almost anyone in the street. Crucially, I’ve become more familiar with the conditions and challenge that the global poor are often faced with on a daily basis. I was also lucky to have made some great friends while in Beira, many of whom were from all over Mozambique and the world. The seafood in Beira was also incredible! The prawns were as big as my forearm and really tasty. After finishing up my research for the summer, I got the chance to go to South Africa for around a week, where I got to go on a safari and visit Cape Town!
Moustafa El-Kashlan
