Recap...

11 Oct 2008
Hello from Mozambique!

A few things that I have learned in Mozambique:
1. Roosters begin crowing far before the sun rises (like 3 am) and continue all day.
2. One should never go anywhere without: hand sanitizer, toilet paper, and some Pepto
3. To kill a chicken: get it between your legs, stand on each of its wings, and then “slit” (which in practice usually means saw at for a while with a semi dull knife) its throat. If you buy it already dead or frozen it likely will make you sick.

I have now officially been in my Mozambican homestay for one whole week – it went so quickly, and yet feels like I have already been here for two years.
I think that I have learned as much Portuguese in one week here as I did during an entire year of high school Spanish. Don't misunderstand me, I can by no means really converse. I have the good morning’s and how are you’s down, and can usually sort of understand what is going on with the help of a few hand gestures. I have just gotten used to being laughed at. My Mae thinks I am just hilarious because I am so incompetent. I am pretty sure that she thinks I come from some heathen family where women don't do chores and thus she has to teach me how to do everything. I try to explain that yes I do know how to peel potatos, we just do it differently in the states. My language skills aren’t really up to par for this conversation yet. She is coming around though. She told me that my Portuguese is getting better, and that I am very smart because I learned quickly when she was teaching me to wash my clothes. Also, she brags to her friends that I like to wash the dishes. I am so domestic here it blows me away.
Our arrival in Namaacha will probably be one of the most memorable experiences of my life. We pulled up to a school in our “bus” and walked onto some basketball courts where all of our host families were sitting in the stands singing “bem vindo a namaacha” and clapping. I was so overwhelmed with gratitude and excitement… and lets face it some anxiety.
After meeting Mae Cecilia, we went back to our casa. The whole way she was just saying “Catalina e Cecilia. Catalina e Cecilia” and I would just say “Minha Mae. Minha Mae” because that was pretty much the extent of my language skills… it made for a pretty awkwardly silent first night or two. Again, hand gestures come in very handy.
Once we got to our casa, immediately I had to “tomar bahn” before lunch. Now for all of you that thought I would come back after two years in Africa skinny, tan and dirty, this is where I need to correct you. Apparently, Mozambicans shower before every meal. By shower, I mean squat naked in a bath tub with a bucket of boiled water and soap up because there is no running water. I actually have it easy, because I have a bath tub. Most volunteers have the casa de bahn outside, where the shower doubles as the pee hole.
I actually have come to find the excessive bathing quite a nice surprise considering the heat and dust… although sometimes annoying when it is cold at night and mama will NOT let me eat dinner without bathing.
To correct the second misconception, apparently it is a compliment to be called fat here. Mae does not think I eat enough, and so she basically force feeds me batatas fritas for every meal. In case you didn't catch that, I am living on French fries. Oh and pasta. And white rice. And white bread. And I think I ate a chicken neck the other day…just to throw some protein in there. “It makes mama happy when you eat well” Mae tells me. My salvation – the fruit IS AMAZING. Although, I had an unfortunate incident with some bad papaya the other day.
But honestly, these are the most kind and hospitable people in the world. The criancas are so adorable, I might come home with 27 adopted Mozambican children. They just stare at me – well lets face it, everyone stares at the tall white girl – and when I say hello in Portuguese they usually just break in to the biggest grin and then giggle at me. One time a group of little boys started following me down the “street” lovingly chanting “mulungo” which is the Changana (local language) word for white person. And sometimes when the children see me they start to cry… But overall the reactions are generally positive.
I went to church with my Mae today. For the first hour I was so enthused. It was all singing and fun. I was thinking that church in Mozambique was the best thing ever. Then I realized that the service hadn’t really started yet. They just sing for the first hour, and then preach in the local language Shangana for TWO MORE HOURS. By they way, it was over 100 degrees today. I was still pretty enthused about the experience throughout, despite the fact that I was hot, sweaty, crammed into a teeny church with about 60 screaming children (I was the only the cause of one of the boy’s tears). After the service, Mae translated some of what had been going on into Portuguese so I could sort of understand. Come to find out, they had been preaching about how women shouldn't wear men’s clothes, that our place is in the home, and that if you can learn to cook and clean “tudo bem” which means all is good. This has been the hardest cultural difference for me to get over. I don't know how to be a feisty feminist in Portuguese. So instead, I learn to do “women’s work” as my Mae calls it.
But overall, so far so good. Each day is sort of an emotional roller coaster, as I go from being confident in my Portuguese, so feeling absolutely unable to communicate, to just wanting to sleep, to having to do whatever my overbearing mother says even though I can’t understand her. I sort of feel like a 3 year old most of the time. The other volunteers are amazing, and we have created such a support network for one another.
FYI, if you decide to send any sort of care package, remember that there is always room for a little thing of hand sanitizer. And it is always much appreciated.

29 Oct 2008
Somewhat of a moral dilemma…

I feel like each time we sit down to eat a dinner of fried fish I look a little bit wasteful. Let me back up – a common meal is rice or pasta with fried carp. By carp, I mean an entire fish, scales, head, tail and all, that has been fried in vegetable oil for a good long while. It actually is quite tasty, and I have pretty much mastered picking the spine/bones out. Here is the dilemma, the rest of my familia eats the head of the fish. Like literally savours the eyeball, leaving only the jawbone which is presumably too crunchy to enjoy and poses the slight threat of choking. Now here is the dilemma, do I succumb to the familial eyes that sort of look at me every time I leave my head un-munched, or stick to my guns and avoid the little fried carp’s eye that so unappetizingly stares up at me?
The food situation has gotten better. As of today, my Mae has let me begin making my own breakfast – which now consists of bread with peanut butter - which I bought in Maputo on our little field trip there last weekend and have until today kept in my closet along with my other illicit goodies ie red wine and chocolate. Mae says that you can also get peanut butter, known here as the brand name “Black Cat” in Swaziland, and she will get it for me next time she goes (FYI Namaacha on the border. From my house I can literally see over the barbed wire fence that separates Mozambique from Swaziland. And they have actual grocery stores there.)
Although I do consider this a pretty major victory, my life as a Peace Corps volunteer doesn't really revolve around food…
I was talking to my language instructor yesterday – Mauro, a 26 year old Mozambican man with dread locks who loves bob Dylan – and somehow we started talking about the civil war which ended in the early ‘90s. (mind you this was all in Portuguese, so I am sure this is a gross simplification of what he actually said to me) He is from Maputo, the capital. During the war, there was little violence in the city – it was mostly police brutality rather than random acts of violence. However, his family (his uncle or father or someone was a judge in Mozambique) had a country house here in Namaacha. The 40 or so mile trip would take hours because there would always be attacks/gunfire. He said that he remembers always sleeping in the armoire in his room in Namaacha because he was so afraid. He would wake inside his little wooden stronghold throughout the night to the sounds of gunfire. I can’t imagine growing up in this sort of climate.
It has astounded me how open Mozambican people are with relative strangers. Mauro freely elaborated on his experiences during the war, when I initially was hesitant to even breach the subject. Along the same lines, people will quite openly talk about those who have died from AIDS (or SIDA in Portuguese). That is not to say that stigma is not a huge problem here, because it is, and Mozambique has one of the highest HIV prevalence’s in Southern Africa (like 27% in some provinces, and higher along major travel corridors). Sex, sexual education, STD’s and HIV in particular are not easy subjects to bring up and discuss with Mozambican people, especially groups of Mozambican people in rural areas. However, I have had multiple people openly discuss those that have died from SIDA. One example:
I was talking to another volunteer’s host father about his family, and he was naming off his sons. He paused, and told me that in fact one of his sons was actually his nephew, but both of the boy’s parents had died when he was very young. “SIDA. But he doesn't know that he isn’t mine.”
I foresee the effects of HIV on Mozambican people, my community members, friends and students, being the hardest thing emotionally for me to deal with during my two years here. A current PC volunteer spoke to our training group. She said: you have to teach your students the importance of being tested. But you have to be prepared for a number of them to test positive.

How do I prepare myself for that?

Overall though, life is good. I legitimately like my life here and even feel a sense of normalcy as I go about my daily routine. Although, there still moments where I step outside myself and just sort of wonder at my life. For example, I was watching the film American Beauty with my friend Claire. Just as we got lost in the scenes of American suburbia, a rooster crowed outside and a few children started shouting in Changana. We turned to each other, and realized that we had just both had the same thought, “Wow, I forgot I was in Africa for a second.”

2 December 2008
Sex Ed in English Class

Happy belated Thanksgiving, and early Christmas! (Wow, I can’t believe it is December already and I have been in Mozambique for two full months.) Training is – finally! – coming to an end, which means I have gotten my site placement. I will be spending the next two years in Chidenguele, in Gaza province in southern Mozambique. The site is a really tiny community, but it is only about an hour away from Xai-Xai, the capital of Gaza province, and it is located right on the EN1, which is the major highway that runs through the south of Mozambique. So it is tiny and rural, but accessible, and near enough to cities that I can get pretty much anything I need/want if I want to make a little day trip.
Also, I should mention that it is 5k from the BEACH! Which is amazing. Google it. And only about 5 hours from Maputo by chapa (minibus) – which shows you that I have been in Africa for a while, I think 5 hours in a crammed little chapa is easy access. So basically, anyone thinking of coming to visit has no excuse not to. Especially since the amazing beaches of Inhambane province are within a few hours (and I have friends stationed all along the coast, which means free places to stay). Also, I am planning on getting my scuba certification in March, because Mozambique has some amazing dive sites. If you feel like diving that might be a great time to come!
In terms of my training, Model School is just coming to an end. I have been teaching English to a class of about 25-50 10th graders (depending on the day, if they feel like coming, if they feel like coming 30 minutes late to my 45 minute class, etc.) Yes, I am a real life teacher. And apparently my strengths are classroom management and discipline, which is not what I was expecting. What works best? I sort of just make fun of them to their face. Especially when they are trying to walk in 30 minutes late and disrupt the class. If the entire class laughs at them, they are much less likely to do it again. Which makes me sound like a horrible person, but in a class of 50 15-25 year olds (only like 5 of which are girls) it is sort of necessary.
Yesterday was World AIDS Day, so all curriculum had to be geared towards HIV/AIDS prevention. I taught a lesson on the uses of can and cannot incorporating common myths about HIV transmission. I was blown away by two things:
1) The fact that some students really do believe a few of the seemingly ridiculous myths about HIV (ex you CANNOT become immune to HIV, even if you sleep with a virgin).
2) The maturity of my students when it came to talking about sex and sexuality. Had I been in an American High School classroom explaining that we CAN protect ourselves by participating in foreplay, then proceeding to give examples and explaining how it keeps the condom from getting dry and breaking, I am pretty sure I would not have been able to control the laughter (seeing as even my American colleagues here were laughing in the back of my classroom especially when I used the phrase “female wetness” which I am pretty sure didn't translate well).
Next challenge: teaching about HIV/AIDS in a new way, that doesn't just perpetuate the trendy “fight against HIV” which has become a sort of baseless pantomime here in Southern Africa. The kids can recite the ways you get HIV, there are red ribbons painted on every building, and yet Mozambique is the only country (I believe in the world) where the incidence or number of new cases of HIV continues to rise. Ideas? Let me know.

16 Dec 2008
A bit of a cockroach situation…

Well it is about time I had to deal with something like this, my stay in Namaacha was darn well near luxurious – at least by Peace Corps Africa standards. I moved into my new house in Chidenguele, Gaza on the 15th. It is a little house which I will eventually share with a Mozambican Portuguese teacher. The house sits on top of a hill, with a beautiful view of the town that is in the valley below. I am about 5k from the beach – a walk that I took today, and it took me a little over an hour each way. The beach was absolutely gorgeous. It is pretty undeveloped, save about 2 or three small resorts that are pretty discreet and spaced out along the coastline.

But let me back up…

I arrived in Chidenguele in the afternoon, after dropping a few other volunteers off at neighboring sites (my closest pc neighbor is about an hour or two away depending on the chapa/day/who knows what else might happen). It was the afternoon, I was starving, and was thankful that I had accepted the ridiculously large amount of biscuits that Mae insisted I carry for the car ride. After a few biscuits, I set about unpacking. Not wanting to brave the walk to the market on my first day – I didn't even really know which way to go in order to go about finding the market and lets face it, living in a new town, all by yourself, in Africa, where no one speaks English, is a little daunting – so I decided to make due with some who knows how old lentils and curry powder I found in the “kitchen” left over from the last volunteer. After my surprisingly delicious little feast, I settled down to watch a movie, and the rain began to pour in my tin roof. Actually, I am not sure how hard it was raining, but the tin roof made it sound like a veritable monsoon. As I drifted off to sleep, I was surprised at how comfortable I was here, not really super nervous about being alone in my little African shanty house (ok I am exaggerating, it is a cement house, but I literally duct-taped the window closed, so shanty is sort of in order. And yes I am nervous being all alone, but this is a safe town… and I sleep with a blow-horn by my head just in case). Well then the cockroach situation emerged.

I heard scurrying.
I heard chirping.
I heard attempted flight.
I flashed my little wind-up light around,
and they scattered in fright.
Luckily, in my attempt to ward off catching malaria, I had tucked my mosquito net in super tight.

This created a barrier between myself and the swarming roaches. They scrambled up and around the net, jumped off and quasi flew/fell to the ground, and then surmounted the net once again. My perception of this happenings as I drifted in and out of sleep was heightened by the fact that my anti-malaria medicine sort of makes me hallucinate… they call it “vivid dreams”. But not a single one got in. Thank goodness. In the morning I found about five roaches dead on my floor. I am not sure if a fall from the net had killed them, or the fact that it is impregnated with bug repellent. Either way, I hope their friends/siblings/parents/neighbors don't come seek revenge…
Other than the slightly restless night, and the fact that my neighbor is insisting that I marry him even though I told him I have two husbands already – one in America and one in Maputo, all is well – things are going well. I do not begin teaching until early February, so I am just working on setting up my house and trying to meet people in the community. One woman, Fatima, was friends with the previous volunteer. I went into her store today to buy some eggs – because lets face it, I can’t live on old lentils for two years – and she told me to come back to “conversar” with her.
Happy Holidays to everyone! A few of us volunteers living in Gaza province are planning on getting together for Christmas and New Years at the beach or something. I was planning on making Christmas cards, and sending them out… but that idea never materialized into anything, so all you get is this hopefully semi-entertaining email.