Practicing Patience

Patience, patience, patience…that’s what this week has been all about for me. One would think that after two months I would always know that “we are leaving now” means that we’ll probably go in half an hour or that “we are eating soon” means that they are just starting to cook, but for some reason I still believe people when they say these things to me. Today my host mom told me that we were going to a “festa”, a party, and that we were going for lunch. She even asked me what my plans were for later in the afternoon after the party, so I assumed that we were truly going around midday for lunch and then would go home afterwards. Needless to say, I was surprised when she told me to get ready to leave at 10am this morning. We left and arrived at the party at 10:30 and apparently my mom was meeting the other women attending the party to cook and prepare the meal that would be served. She told me to sit in a chair in the shade so I sat there with the grandmothers, babies, and some of the men (men don’t cook in Mozambique). I talked to some people a little bit, but most of the conversation around me was in Changana, the local language here, and since I only know how to say limited phrases in Changana, my conversation skills were limited so I just sat and observed. One hour passed, then two, three….four…and after four hours it looked like they were done cooking and then my host mom informed me that the guests of honor had not arrived yet so we could not eat. (The party was a wedding reception and I assume that they were married yesterday or this morning, but I’m not sure). So we waited some more. On another note…it was about 100 degrees and humid today and the only drink they had while we sat there was tap water and since it was not boiled nor bleached nor filtered, I was not supposed to drink it. I probably would have, and probably would have gotten sick, but my host mom forbid me from drinking it: needless to say, I was pretty thirsty. Anyway, around 3:30 or 4 the couple showed up and we all ate. The party then continued with cake cutting, presents, and lots of singing and dancing. Finally around 6:30 the party started to die down and my mom asked if I was ready to go soon (which I was)….and then half an hour later we were on our way home. Overall it was a fun day, just not what I expected, although I guess it really never is exactly how I expect it to be here! We are entering our last week and pack up to go to our swearing in ceremony in Maputo on Friday!

Site Placement!

Hi all! I got my site placement today! I will be in a small village called Chongoene in Gaza Province. I am replacing a previous volunteer which is nice because I have a house that is already furnished. It is a three room house with two bedrooms and a kitchen/living room I guess?? It sounds like a pretty small town, but I am only 17K from a popular beach town called Xai-Xai which has a lot of resources. My house will have electricity (most of the time), but no running water or internet or anything. I am slated to teach chemistry and computer technology. The volunteer before me taught 11th and 12th grade chem so it's possible that I'll be teaching that too. I also live right at my school so it seems like it might be a bit safer. I am very excited about my site as of now, however I am veryyyy far away from some of my good friends here.

This weekend we have a 3 day weekend and I am going to a beach town called Bilene with a bunch of other volunteers. Our plan is to lay on the beach and relax! We leave at 5:30 tomorrow morning and the trip should take about 4-5 hours. I'll update when I get back. It's always great to hear from everyone!

I'm a Mozambican aunt!

We went to a suburb of the capital city last week called Matola. It has a supermarket, some clothing stores, and a restaurant with wireless! Anyway, all of those things are really exciting for us. We literally just walked around the supermarket for a while checking out all of the things that it had. At lunch we all had chocolate milkshakes and then burgers or pizza and diet cokes. Sounds pretty normal for the US, but those are special treats for us J.

The trip back from Matola last week was quite the adventure. In Mozambique a lot of travel is done by chapa. A chapa is like a little van that has four rows of seating. The chapas have no set schedule, but do have set routes that they travel. They also really pack people into the chapas and they will not leave unless they are packed full of people. Anyway, we had taken a chapa to Matola in the morning directly from Namaacha. We got on the chapa in Namaacha at 8 and then it circled around town for an hour until it found enough people to fill it up and leave. On the trip back we discovered that there are no chapas that return directly from Matola to Namaacha and so we would have to take a bus halfway there to a town called Boane and then we could find a chapa from there. We eventually found the bus that would take us to Boane and even though it seemed full, we knew we would have to pack in. I have never been so squished and so close to people in my life! They literally pack as many people as possible that will fit in this bus. We got off at the last stop so the bus cleared out a little bit and we saw a sign that said that listed the bus capacity at 40 people. We counted and estimated that there were about 150 people on the bus at one time…no exaggeration there… We then figured out the “spot” in Boane where we had to wait for the next chapa. It was literally a corner of this playground in town which was unmarked, but everyone of course just “knew” that it was the right place to get a chapa from Boane to Namaacha. We then waited for about 2 or 2 ½ hours as several open backed trucks carted people off to Namaacha (we were advised not to ride in those). Finally after one failed chapa, we found one that would take us home and we made it back to Namaacha.

I’m a Mozambican aunt! We have had a sister-in-law of my family here living with us for a while because she was pregnant. Yesterday morning she had her baby at the hospital here in town! The grandmother invited me to go with her to the hospital yesterday so yesterday afternoon I went to see her. The hospital has a small building designated to be a maternity ward. It was one long room with about 10 hospital beds. There were four women in the room with their newborn babies. They handed me the newborn baby girl right away and I got to hold her for a while. I’m not sure I’ve ever held a baby that small! The baby's name is Yulli and they named her today because they didn't know if it was going to be a girl or a boy. It was a really cool experience and I think the two of them are coming home this afternoon.

Also I have recently discovered that my camera cord is packed away in my 2 year bag….so it will be another month until I have access to it. So I promise I will post pictures in a month!

This week we have started to prepare for model school. Model school is set up at the local secondary school to be practice for all of the education volunteers. The kids here are on summer vacation, but they get a group of kids to sign up to attend model school and we teach lessons in our disciplines to them each morning for two weeks. I will be teaching 4 different lesson plans and 7 lessons in total, so three of the lessons I will be teaching to more than one class. It’s a little intimidating to have to teach in Portuguese in a real classroom setting, but it will be great practice to have to design our own lesson plans and teach them before we get into our real schools.

This week we also had a technical session where the teachers evaluated us on the domestic skills that we have learned since we got here. Some people had to light charcoal, others had to grind peanuts, make coconut milk, kill chickens, pluck chickens, etc. A friend and I volunteered to crack and shred the coconuts and it was a success...and also really fun.

Life with the host families is still going well, but I am more eager to live on my own and on my own schedule by the day. Also, the immense attention that I get from people, especially kids, on the street is starting to get old, but that’s something that I’ll have to get used to here in Mozambique. The weather has gotten hot and we have had several 100 degree plus days, but it always cools off at night so sleeping is still comfortable. That’s all for now. I’ll update again soon!

Happy Halloween!

So Mozambicans do not celebrate Halloween, but we did! We had a party last night with just volunteers and we all dressed up. Dressing up in costumes was very tricky because we had limited clothes and materials, but people were creative and did a pretty good job. Two friends and I were thing 1, thing 2, and the Cat in the Hat and we were finalists in the costume contest! We get stared at on the streets a lot for being foreigners and just looking out of place in general, but last night with silly outfits on and blue wigs made out of plastic bags on our heads, people literally pointed and laughed…just something you get used to.
Last weekend we did a day hike on Sunday and climbed a little mountain nearby where the borders of Swaziland, Mozambique, and South Africa all meet. About 30 volunteers went and it was so much fun. The view from the top was great and we had our lunch up there. It’s nice to be able to get out of the town once and a while and spend more time with the other volunteers.

We learned a lot about site placements in the last few weeks from a couple of the volunteers who are visiting. They basically informed us about the advantages and disadvantages of each place and gave us a better idea of where we could be living for the next two years. Site placement announcements take place November 18th and I’m literally counting down the days.

We’ve also learned a lot about corruption and cheating in schools, which is a big problem here. Apparently the majority of kids here cheat….a lot and the teachers don’t really control it. The teachers also sometimes take bribes from students for better grades and there are a lot of students who will fail a class and then have their grade changed by the school director for whatever reason so that they pass. As a result some of the volunteers said that they have had students in 8 or 9th grade who can barely read and write, if at all. It sounds like we will be faced with some big obstacles once we get into teaching. We can also be placed at a variety of schools. Some of the sites are at public schools, catholic schools, mission schools, primer ciclo(8th, 9th, 10th grade) and some are secundo ciclo (11th and 12thgrade) so who knows where I will end up!

We had a cooking day this week with our language groups where we got to cook “American food” or basically show our host moms the type of thing that we would make for ourselves. My group made grilled cheese with tomatoes and onions in it and gazpacho, which was delicious! The host moms all tried our food too and I think they liked it, but they were weirded out by the idea of cold soup and thought it was a funny concept. The food here is good, but it’s a lot of rice all the time so moving to my own place where I can cook for myself in about a month will be nice.

Miss you all, send me e-mails!

Life after two weeks

Firstly, all is well here. The weather in Namaacha is so bizarre. On Monday it was about 90-95 degrees and so humid all day. Last night? It was 40 degrees. Incredible. We had one hot day and the rest of the week has been cool and rainy. The red mud, which they call “matope” sticks to everything. Literally after it rains and the ground is wet, if I go running, I get 2 inches thick of mud on the bottom of my shoes. The people here hate to be dirty too so I end up cleaning my shoes daily so that I’m not scolded by my host sister.

Last Saturday we went to Maputo, which is the capital of Mozambique, with our language groups. We went mainly to buy cell phones and do other errands. Maputo is only about an hour and a half away from Namaacha, depending on how fast your chapa driver goes. Chapas are the main form of transportation here within cities and long distances. They are basically small 12 passenger vans that drive along designated routes and you can flag them down anywhere. You are also expected to squeeze 20ish people inside, which gives each person VERY little room, but transportation is cheap and we only paid 50 meticais to get to Maputo (about $1.40).

In Maputo we bought phones , walked around, and went out to lunch. We all had pizza at lunch which we were craving because cheese is not easily accessible in Namaacha. It will be nice to go back to Maputo when I am not in such a structured group so that I can get to know the city better and see more things.

On Sunday I was told that we were going to church, which turned out to be a mass of about 20 people that was held in our garage next to the house. The service was also held completely in Changana, the local language in this part of the county, so obviously I did not understand one word.

This week my host sister has been starting to really teach me the household chores and how to do everything. Unfortunately there are no washers or dryers here so this morning I washed all of my clothes by hand. It’s a long process of washing and rinsing and transferring clothes from bucket to bucket and it is VERY TIRING. It took me three hours to wash my clothes and the knuckles on my hands are cut and raw. Also, most people here do not have gas or electric stoves. My family, like many others, cooks with charcoal or over a wood fire, which makes cooking slightly more challenging.

Yesterday I saw a chicken have its head cut off and then we cooked it for dinner. Apparently my host sister says that that is my next task, to kill my first chicken. The volunteer who killed it accidentally let go for a second after cutting its head off and it jumped around for a minute until someone stepped on it and held it down until it was really dead. Chickens really do run around with their heads cut off.

I have yet to take many pictures, but I will take some soon so that I can post them and everyone can see what it looks like here!

Tudo bem

The first week in Namaacha has been great. I was placed with a really cool host family. My host “mom” is really only 29 and considers me her sister. Her name is Ana Paula. She also has a sister, Cecilia, who lives with us who is 24 and a brother who is in high school (although I’m not sure of his age). Their mother also lives with us as well as Cecilia’s baby, Roland, who is almost three. Roland has some sort of mental disability…at first they said it was Downs syndrome, but it’s not, and then they told me that it was epilepsy, so I am not quite sure what the story is, but he is a happy kid and has shown a liking for me. He is also fun to play with when my mind is fried from speaking Portuguese because he isn’t talking yet, so I can just play with him.

When we first arrived in Namaacha our host mothers picked us up from the school and we walked with them back to our house. After walking for just a minute or two, a pick-up truck passed us with a volunteer and his mom sitting in the back. They stopped and my host mother pulled me towards it and we got in along with a couple of other pairs. The truck stopped a couple of more times until we had 13 people sitting/standing in the back of this small pick-up truck. Luckily, everyone made it to their destination safely. The first weekend with our families was long, but luckily two other girls live close to me and my host mother is good friends with their families so I got to visit with them some.

They baptized a bunch of people at one of the churches last Sunday so we got to go to a baptism party, which was pretty cool. We stopped at a few places on the way to pick up a cake, sodas, and “biscoitos” that I helped make (they are like balls of dough that are lightly fried and rolled in coconut shavings). The women do all the work here, which was obvious when my host mother carried a 24 pack of full glass soda bottles on her head and the father of her child who was with us carried her purse.

My room is a decent size and I am in a full sized bed which is nice. Other than a bed there is not much else in my room other than dated pop star posters, my water filter, and my suitcase of clothes. We have electricity, but no running water so my baths are out of a bucket as expected. They keep very clean here and expect you to bathe 2-3 times a day so I have been bathing in the morning before school and then again at night before dinner.

They are feeding me well—too well—and I have to refuse food at every meal because they are trying to fatten me up. The food staple here is definitely rice, but we always have some sort of veggie like dish or sauce with it. We eat a lot of cabbage and they make all sorts of other leaf dishes with coconut shavings or coconut milk to flavor.

Yesterday we walked down to a “nearby waterfall”, which ended up being a little trickle of water because it has been dry, and also was about 3 or 4 miles away, which meant that we had to then trek back uphill for 3 or 4 miles. It was a good workout though. I have been running in the mornings with a couple of the volunteers here in the mornings which is refreshing and my host brother ran with us one day also. Apparently he runs for the team at his school and has won all sorts of medals so it was really nice that he wanted to come along with us to run. Other than running in the mornings I don’t have that much free time.

Namaacha is cooler and it has been in the low 60’s most of this week, but it should get warmer as the summer progresses. It is also muddy, muddy, muddy and when it rains and everything gets dirty with the reddish mud. The people here are very nice and always greet us on the street and the little kids love us. Yesterday a couple of friends and I were bombarded by some elementary school kids on our way home from lunch. They were fighting each other to hold our hands and ask us questions as we walked home.

In the afternoons we have technical classes at the secondary school with Peace Corps workers and we have been learning about making learning objectives and lesson plans. Next week each subject is required to do a 10 minute mock lesson to the class and I was elected to present the main part of the one for the chemistry group—oh and it’s in Portuguese, so I have a lot of prep to do for that this weekend and words to look up that pertain to chemistry.

I am enjoying myself very much here so far!
Miss all of you! Send me an e-mail!

Vamos a Namaacha

Hi All, after tonight I will not have much internet (if at all) over the next 2 months so I figure that a blog update as of now would be useful. I haven’t seen the country or city very much because we have been at the hotel the whole time, but the hotel has palm trees and green grass all around though
and it feels very tropical. I did see the indian ocean on my way here in the bus so that was cool! There were some nice houses and we saw the American Embassy which looked nice, but the neighboring houses are often little shacks so there are definitely big disparities economically.

Yesterday we had safety talks, medical talks, medical interviews, and language interviews and shots. I only had one shot yesterday, but I am getting a couple more today. I also met the Ambassador yesterday morning and she was so cool! I wish she could have hung around more so I could talk to her, but she said that she would be back again soon. She has been a foreign officer for 20ish years and has worked in Thailand, Kenya, Mozambique, Turkey, and a lot of other cool places.

Tomorrow we go to our training site in a city called Namaacha for the next two months where we will live with host families so I get to meet my host family tomorrow!

This week we have had 4 current PC volunteers around so I have been able to ask them questions and one of them is a chem teacher so I have been able to ask him a lot about what to expect. He
says that he has 50 students in his class, which is considered small.
He said that some volunteers up north have up to 120 students!

Apparently previous volunteers here have loved it here. We heard today that out of the
group scheduled to leave in December, 13 volunteers decided to extend
their stay here by either 4, 8, or 12 months. I find that to be very
impressive and I think that it says good things about the country.

I think that life is definitely going to be a lot slower here because
everything just takes a lot longer. They taught us how to take bucket
baths today and educated us on boiling and bleaching our water. (We also will not have any running water and will have to fetch it). The Peace Corps provides us with a water filter, mosquito net, linens,
towels, a cook book and some other study materials for us during
training, which is very nice and will be useful for the next 2 months.

Sorry if this post is badly written. I did it in several different spurts so it might be choppy.

Again, letters are appreciated and I will update the blog when I can!

Love you all,

Michelle