FORTY HOUR WEEK??!!!

11/29/2012

What is this foreign sensation of being busy??

Monday nobody was at work so I spent another lazy day at home drawing a picture and fixing some things up around the house – just another start to a typical week.

On Tuesday someone (aka the only person who shows up) mentioned that we should maybe start planning for AIDS day. I asked when that was, to which he casually responded: this week. I asked what exactly we need to plan, to which he responded with a slew of activities/ events/ projects. So in the course of 3 days we: pulled together the funds; made and coordinated our program with the hospital, government, and education system; purchased the materials for a march around the town with candles, painting the trees in town, a running contest, a soccer contest, a jeopardy contest, and a lunch for 100 people; wrote a speech for the whole town; planned a HIV/AIDS training for the whole town; made banners; among other seemingly impossible feats.

This wouldn’t have been nearly as difficult if our president who usually runs the show wasn’t sick in hospital, if our second in command wasn’t also sick and barely available, if our main supervisor wasn’t busy this week giving vaccines with the hospital around the district, and if 2 of our other supervisors didn’t have young children with malaria. Not to mention that conveniently the focal person in the government is sick at home, the focal person in the education department is also sick at home, and hey! it’s the week-of and unsurprisingly the hospital and education department also are just planning their programs alongside us. SO! Basically it’s the last possible minute and nothing is planned – welcome to Mozambique J

For the past few days me and my organization’s accountant (seeing as we are the only healthy and sick-children-free individuals) ran around our entire district pulling all of these loose strings together. Between attending a funeral for the half the day on Wednesday morning for one of our supervisors, spending all Thursday afternoon in the hospital with a supervisor and her young child with a high fever and malaria, and visiting our organization’s president every evening in a hospital a few towns away… Also managed to squeeze in a meeting with a private business that’s interested in donating food to our OVCs (orphans and vulnerable children) – pretty excited about that possibility. Needless to say, we’ve had our hands full this week.

I’d forgotten what it feels like to actually be busy!! It’s awesome, and I’ve taken the liberty of all these things falling on my organization’s plate to let me full OCD planning beast out on them by making excel sheets and to-do lists galore! I swear, next year I’m forcing all the chefes of this town to sit down together a month in advance to discuss the programs for this event because there are way too many individual actors for this event to happen successfully  when nobody talks with one another.

I’ll try to attach photos of the events from this week J

-         

 sleepy and sore Emily

The good, the bad and the ugly of life in Africa

10/24/12

I want to make sure I document those moments I’m overwhelmed with emotion, be them feelings of gratitude for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity or feelings of pure insanity wondering how anyone in their right mind would opt voluntarily to do what I’m doing. So here goes:

Those moments to cherish

Those things I could happily live without

Bathing outside in the open during the cool dawn hours with the wind blowing through the reed walls and the sunlight streaming through the leaves above. LOVE waking up to that J The satisfaction (albeit neck ache) of carrying 20L of water on your head alongside all the other neighborhood women back home from the next closest running water spigot. Everyone here gets a real kick out of my determination to do it myself, even though I spill half of it on myself by the time I’ve returned home. Going to the market each day to pick up fresh local fruits, vegetables, legumes and grains to make my meals from scratch. I also love knowing my favorite vendors by name and chit chatting with them everyday; wish life was still like that back in the states. MANGOS!  And papayas and banana trees galore!!! Since all the fruits are picked off the trees there’re way more fresh and delicious. The sense of security I feel with so many neighbors so close around me – power in numbers! Although most of the time terrifying, there are certain aspects about traveling in a developing country I admit I find quite exhilarating. Like sitting on top of sacks of rice and beans for hours on the back of an open-back pick-up truck while we climb up and down dirt roads winding through the forests of palm trees, mango trees and cashew trees. Or climbing into a little boat to get to a major city because there are no bridges. I oftentimes wonder if rollercoasters will still give me a thrill after the rides I’ve already been on during these first 5 months. The reed-walled home is growing on me. I love feeling the wind when it blows outside, or waking to the pitter-patter of rain on my tin roof when it sprinkles. It’s very relaxing and earthy. Cooking without smoke detectors  10 mets, or the equivalent of 35 cents (give or take on the exchange rate) will get me a huge bag of mangoes  I find myself eating a steady 3 per day (at least.) Mmmmmmmhmmmmm gotta love mango season!

The occasional worm or bug crawling up your foot / leg while you’re outside bathing or using the bathroom. Freaks me out every time. When the water goes out, you forgot to hoard up earlier, and you don’t know when it’ll come back on… = no fun The lack of quick & easy meals… My go-to easy meals are popcorn (where I pop the kernels in oil over a flame in a pot) or pancakes (made from scratch and no measuring utensils.) Soon with the mango season starting I have a feeling those will creep up to #1. More fresh and naturally ripened fruits are not part of our diet back in the states so the extra acidity in them does a number on your teeth here. I have an ominous tooth ache that I’m afraid will become my first cavity L The lack of peace and quiet with so many neighbors so close around me. My favorite days are Sundays when everyone is at church… Transportation here scares the living bageesus out of me. Not going to go into details because I know there are people that love me that read this blog and I don’t want to worry them, but know that I do all I can to lower my risks of danger. ANTS. I hate hate HATE ants and they’re everywhere. I just can’t seem to get rid of them, no matter what chemical cocktail I buy at the store, or how often I sweep and scrub my house clean, or the fact that every single piece of food is wrapped in at least one plastic bag and then hung from the ceiling not touching the floor or walls… They’re still in my tea kettle (where I only boil water!), on my lufa (which at most has soap scrubs), on my clean sheets (not the ones on my bed, the dang ones I washed and stored away), in my books, … just everywhere. 70 degree nights and 90 degree days (and that’s just in the shade, afraid to take the thermometer outside, might just melt.) (Seriously, I bathe and am already sweating by the time I’m dressed again.) the loud bangs of falling mangoes onto my tin roof while I try to sleep. Not even ear plugs can stop me from jumping every time one of those suckers slams down up above.

Ok, that’s all I have for the time being, but now that I’ve started the list it’ll be easier to add on to it whenever a new love/hate moment pops into my mind.

Hope you enjoyed reading about the joys and tribulations of my life in Mozambique!

The Adventures of Pip

10/23/12

Some of you may recall that I had mentioned a few posts ago that my neighbor’s cat had given birth to 3 kittens, and that one of these kittens had been promised a home with yours truly. Well, at long last the time had finally come for my neighbors to get rid of the little rascals so they called me over to pick up my new child. I never really had a choice in which kitten I would adopt (which was probably a good thing considering my debilitating indecisive nature). You see, between the 3 kittens there were 2 white ones and one little black one…  I was given the little black ball of fur.

That first night was rough. I know that the first night a new kitten or puppy is taken away from the only home they’d ever known and their family is supposed to be hard, but I’d vastly underestimated how much more difficult it would be when you live next door to the kitten’s first home. Needless to say that within the first hour of bringing my new baby girl home (at least I think the kittens a she….) her mother heard her crying and stationed herself on the other side of my reed walls. Hour. After. Hour. I had to watch this poor baby kitty cry her eyes out for her mama who was just out of reach wailing for her baby on the other side of my porous walls. I tried to return the kitten to my neighbors but they refused to take her back so quickly, wanting me to wait a few days before I make up my mind. I spent a good deal of that first night (and the following few ones afterwards) trying to calm her down but those high pitched squeaking cries of hers never waned. I have rarely in my life felt like a villain, but that night was one of those nights I could imagine myself in a Cruella Deville get-up crackling evilly.

Anyways, you know that saying: “if you can’t beat them join them”? By Day #2 I went against everyone’s warnings and let mama cat come in to be gloriously reunited with her stolen baby. Touching eh? Except, sadly, the moment the mama ran into my house and spotted the bowls of milk, shrimp + rice, dry kitten food, etc. lying on the floor, well, I guess you can say her priorities changed. Instead of running to the kittens rescue she made a B-line for the food, and (yea it gets worse) when the lil’ baby came to her mama herself she was rudely hissed at and swatted away. Big mama became territorial. To make matters worse, the neighbor’s cat decided right then and there that I was her new best friend and put on her cat-charm full force: purring, rubbing against my legs, trying to get me to pet her and jumping to sit on my lap, etc. Now I’m not saying that I’m prejudice against older cats and only like kittens, no no no. It was just that I was still seeing this whole debacle through the lens of a Disney movie starring my poor baby. Now, not only has the evil human stolen the poor little kitten out of the safe warm confines of her home, she’s (inadvertently since I really didn’t mean to do this!) turned the kitten’s sole rescuer against her. HER OWN MOTHER! I sat there petting mama cat while poor baby kitten watched from the adjoined room, and every time the kitten would crawl over to her mama the heartless feline would hiss her away. Heartbreaking, I know.

Anyways, that dry cat food for kittens was pretty darn $$ (about a day’s salary) so eventually I stopped feeding mama Cat, which was fine by me now that I knew she was crying outside my door for the food in little pip squeak’s bowls and not to console her terrified baby. I gladly took over the mama role with the baby kitten, and by the end of the 1^st week little miss meowmers was eating dry food, using her kitty litter box, and purring when I pet her (which is still kind of hard because her entire body can fit in 1 hand.)

It’s been a whole 2 weeks now and Pip (short for Pip Squeak) and I are just 2 peas in a pod – except maybe our sleeping schedules, still need to work on syncing those up. I’ll post a picture of her on the blog as soon as I can get her to sit still long enough to take one J

Ate o proximo!

E & P

ps: Here's a quick video of Pip :)

Photos!

minha casa:

mural we painted:

Upbeat updates

I am happy to announce that my reading speed has decreased! Yes, I am finally now busy enough to NOT have time to read a book a day :)

My English club has been absolutely awesome – we started with about 8 people and are now no less than 19 dedicated and enthusiastic members! We range from ages 12 to 36 and meet 6 hours a week. We’ve created a wonderful environment of learning and laughter; we sing, play games, read aloud… everyone helps one another, everyone actively participates in grammar lessons, and a lot of students even come to class with their own ideas for activities! I still lead the sessions, but I’m so happy that we have a much more “group-effort” feel instead of the typical formal classroom environment. And already I occasionally hear my English Club members yell out greetings to me in English when I’m walking through town!

My Portuguese and Citswa tutors are equally amazing. They are both professors in town and are really friendly, knowledgeable and eager for me to learn. They are also, despite me telling them I could only pay for 1 tutor at a time, adamant about both being present for every session (so I basically have 2 professors tutoring me private lessons for the price of one!) We’ve discussed my learning styles, decided on the lesson plans, and I meet with them 3 hours a week and do homework compositions and notecards on my free days. Anyone who knows how much of a dork I am with learning languages could guess that I’m in heaven :)

Hrm, what else, oh the mural I did last weekend turned out wonderful! It was for two REDES groups (Raparigas em desenvolvimento, educacao e saude – girls in development, education and health) and was held in a local secondary school in a town in my province. There were about 30 young girls who participated ranging from ages 11 to 15, 7 of us Peace Corps Volunteers to supervise the event, and the day was filled with games, songs, a guest speaker, the mural painting and activities to make jewelry. In the beginning of the day we had a brain-storming session with the girls on what they wanted the theme of the mural to be, I sketched some ideas on a blackboard for their opinions, and then I was given free artistic reign to design the mural while they worked on sewing earrings from capulana scraps. After I’d drawn the outlines of the shapes and messages in marker, the girls came out and painted everything in while we supervised and helped in with some of the trickier parts. As a final touch I asked all the girls to stick their hands into a color and put their hand print on the wall so they could always come back and know they’d helped create it. All and all it was a great success! I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect going in since the event was being held by two veteran PCVs and I was merely asked to help out, but I’m really very happy with the way it turned out!

This weekend I’m going to another nearby town to help paint a library my friend has built for her town. Okay, it wasn’t exactly “built” but she was able to have the project approved by her town’s administration, they let her use an old building near the primary school for the project, she applied for and received a grant of money for the books (not to mention personally fundraised a hefty amount of funds for books herself), and is now getting ready to put on the finishing touches for her library project! I’m so excited for her and to be able to help out, I can only hope that 1 or 2 years from now I’ll be working on a project of equal grandeur!

Also I’m finally starting to find some direction at work… While I still have no job description, I’ve succeeded to complain enough to my coworkers that we’ve decided that while I wait for a job description to materialize that we’d schedule 2 monthly palestra events (a palestra is a mix between a meeting and a training led by 1 person) with me and our 49 CD activistas (CD = Cuidados Domiciliares = home-based-care). So basically I’ll have free reign to discuss the importance of using condoms, having mosquito nets, maintaining a healthy diet, food sustainability, vertical transmission, TARVs, and all of rest of the health information I learned during training with my organization’s activistas in hopes that they then transfer the message to our 265 clients. I practiced by trying to explain what exactly HIV is to our accountant, and even though he’s a university graduate and probably understands me more than anyone else at our organization, it was pretty rough trying to explain what an immune system is in Portuguese. So yeah, a little nervous on how these palestras will go with our activistas, many of which have probably not finished secondary school…. First one’s on October 10^th, I’ll let you know how it goes!

To wrap up this blog post which is getting much too long for its own good, I’m finally making some traction on getting cement inside my house! Assuming nothing falls through (which is a pretty big assumption) I should be able to schedule the work in the next coming weeks! (this is to say nothing of getting a door on the bathing area or latrine, but my eyes on small accomplishments!

Missing my friends and family dearly, as always

Em

Garden Cheerleaders

After a month and a half of growing seeds in egg cartons, yes, I finally started my garden!

My South African friend who lives in my village had given me 5 big bags of manure, peat, straw, coconut shell mulch and wood chips (I used some to start a compost and the rest to put into the garden itself) while my Japanese friend in town had given me a bunch of lemon grass and sweet potatoes to put around my bern (a bern is the outer perimeter of a garden – good ol’ PST!) This past Tuesday was a national holiday so I took my day off to buckle down and start digging up the beds and whatnot. It’s a good thing we learned about perma-gardening in training because if I hadn’t done the famous “double dig” I would have missed all the treasure I dug up. Turns out the spot I’d chosen for my garden (let me clarify, the ONLY empty area in the quintal) is also coincidentally the location of the most recent garbage pit. My bounty included a lovely range from clothes hangers to polyester hair extensions…

The highlight of my day however wasn’t the occasional plastic bottle cap but the fact that within 2 minutes of my gardening I heard muffled giggles and turned around to see 3 of my neighbor’s children up in a tree watching me from the other side of our fence. Now, try to imagine this: 1. The place I’d chosen for my garden so happened to be in the far end of the quintal so these children were no less than 10-15 feet away from me, high up in a mango tree, leaning over a rickety old reed fence. 2. I don’t own a shovel so I was at the moment digging up trenches with a tin can. 3. I’m the only white female in the village. Haha, so yeah, I cracked up when I saw them all giggling up there and waved to them in good humor since I realized, yes, this was funny.

I’d assumed that after a few minutes of watching me they’d get bored and go off to play, but alas, 10, 15,… 30 minutes later they were not only still holding ground (or well, you know what I mean) but had tripled in numbers to include now 5 children up in the tree and 4 kids that had climbed up the fence and had their eyes peering over the top. Far from being annoyed, I honestly felt a little bad that watching some white girl dig holes in the ground was the most interesting thing they could be doing on their day off from school. So instead of shooing them away, I finally decided to put them to use! One was sent on the mission to find me a decent shovel (in a belated attempt to save any back muscles I may not have yet pulled by this point), another was given the important task of occasionally going inside to tell me the time, and the remaining children were burdened with entertaining me J

We sang songs together (after a few Portuguese songs one of the older kids ran inside the nearest house and within a few minutes out blasted Abba, Bob Marley and Michael Jackson from it), we discussed our favorite fruits (a topic that came up quite naturally sine the mango tree some of them were sitting in is currently budding baby mangoes), and I probably asked them to repeat their names no less than 3 separate times since more and more children kept on magically appearing. Eventually they lost all pretenses, climbed over the fence, and sat by the edge of the garden on the ground watching me as if I were a captivating TV show. At one point some of the more annoying kids in the neighborhood came by and started throwing rocks into my garden to bother me… not realizing now that I had acquired a posy, the culprits were immediately besieged with a wave of angry yelling from my new friends.

The hours slipped by and before I realized it I was late for a lunch date I was supposed to have with a friend in a nearby town. I bid my audience a quick farewell, hauled the remaining bags of mulch and whatnot back to my veranda, quickly changed out of my manure-covered clothes, and was running outside to lock the door when I realized my entire fan-club was standing outside my door. I assumed they hadn’t understood me when I said I needed to go and I was about to explain again why I must leave both them and my garden half-finished, but then I realized that the kids in the middle of the group were hiding something behind their back. Looking up bashfully, the children presented me with a big papaya and thanked me for spending the day with them.

Yeah. “Adorable” doesn’t even cut it.

All and all, I didn’t finish my garden but now when I walk down the dirt path home from work I occasionally am assaulted with a mob of children running to come hug me. All for letting them watch me garden J

PS: I decided to play hooky on Friday and stay home in the morning to finish up potting my seedlings and, lo-and-behold, magically within the first 2 minutes again I heard the familiar ruffle of tree branches and looked up to see my friends grinning widely from up in the mango tree

Cyber Book Club

I’ve been reading. A lot. So I thought I’d keep track of the books I’ve been reading and share them here in case anyone back home has any comments or is looking for a good read. So here goes…

1. The Hunger Games – great quick read to dive into and forget about reality 
2. Catching Fire – must read after the first book 
3. Mocking jay – must read after the first 2 books (read all three books within a week) 
4. A Complicated War – GREAT book about the recent history of Mozambique. Intelligent, interesting and informative – I highly recommend this one 
5. Amore e Vento – a so-so read, the writing style wasn’t very captivating. Wouldn’t recommend 
6. O Ultimo Voo do Flamingo – much better read, reminded me of Gabriel Garcia style of surrealist writing 
7. The Adventure of Winnie the Pooh – one can never read this book enough times 
8. Once on a Time – another great book by A A Milne, lovely quick read 
9. Ender’s Game – GREAT scifi read, another one to dive head first into 
10. Speaker for the Dead – sequel to the above book (there’s a 3rd to the series but I haven’t been able to get it yet L 
11. Three Men in Boat – tough read, there was no conflict in the plot so it was a struggle to find interest in this one. Wouldn’t recommend 
12. The Help – I liked this one, it was a bit longer than I think it needed to be but was still a quick read (took about 4 days) 
13. Who Stole My Cheese? – really liked this one, it was a quick and simple book (literally, you can read this in an hour) but the message is worthwhile and can really help if read at the correct time and taken seriously. Read this one twice in 1 afternoon and it really helped push me off my high horse and get over myself 
14. Harry Potter & the Sorcerer’s Stone – reading this series so I can FINALLY know all those darn inside jokes of my Harry Potter addict friends back home! Real simple style so if you have as much free time as I do you can do a book a day. This first one wasn’t too enthralling but I have high hopes for the rest of the series! 
15. Harry Potter & the Chamber of Secrets - great books to read out loud to children. I have the series in Portuguese as well and hope to one day be able to get my neighborhood kids to sit still for long enough to listen to these J 
16. Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban - definitely starting to get into these now - my blond and red headed friends should be happy! 
17. Harry Potter & the Order of the Phoenix 
18. Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince 
19. Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows - to celebrate finishing these books I spent a weekend watching all of the movies (sorry red head and blondie, I couldn't wait another year but we can do it again when you come visit!!) 
20. 50 Shades of Grey - I'm a little embarrassed to admit having read these. DEFINITELY should have an age limit to this one. It's like the Twilight series only substitute the werewolves and vampires for very inappropriately explicit intimate sex scenes... 
21. 50 Shades Darker 
22. 50 Shades Free 
23. Memoirs of a Geisha - nice easy weekend read 
24. Skinner's Drift - book about a woman in South Africa after apartheid ends 
25. Xenocide - the third sequel in the Orson Scott Card trilogy mentioned above 
26. Marley and Me by John Grogan - cute quick read 
27. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald - oldie but goodie. 
28. To Have and to Have Not by Ernest Hemingway. Bit depressing but a quick interesting read 
29. The Giver by Lois Lowry - another adolescent classic. Love these afternoon novels :) 
30. A Wind at the Door by Madeleine L'Engle - surprisingly interesting. Definitely for young adults but I'd never read L'ENgle before and now I really want to read a Wrinkle in Time 
31. A Brief History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson - not actually entirely done with this book yet (it's one of those in the background books I've been reading while I read others....) Close enough to being done though that there's no possibility of me NOT finishing it. And for the record - extremely interesting. Like this book a lot. 

Things Looking Up

9/10/2012

Sorry I haven’t updated my blog in so long. I’ve tried to write blog updates but they all inevitably turn into me being a bitter old sourpuss. If there’s one thing worse than hearing someone complain, its knowing that you’re the one doing the complaining. Figured it be best to save myself the little self-respect I had left and save you all from the torture of hearing my self-pity dialogue.

And thank you for all the uplifting and reality-smacking emails from friends and family – support and re-grounding were exactly what I needed in order to swallow that lemon in my throat. I thought for a while that my larium medications might have had something to do with my negative outlook on my newly found situation (one of its side effects is depression) but then I realized that pointing the blame on my prophlyaxis wouldn’t get my very far (besides in bed with malaria if I went off them). Instead I’ve been learning to make the best of my situation instead of moping around thinking of what could have been if I’d pulled another straw in life.

Things to be happy about:

-  My host family has been great giving me my personal space and it seems to be going pretty well! Still a ways to go before we’re completely comfortable with one another but it’s much better than I’d originally feared! I have to say, they’ve been amazingly patient and understanding with my crazy American ways (cooking for 1 person and keeping company with a book is considered pretty crazy in a culture centered around the community.)

-  a friend lent me his electric stove while I still wait to find a gas tank so I can move off my peanut butter + bread diet (thank goodness too because my pants were starting to get real tight there!)

-  for 2 of the past 4 weekends I met up with my neighboring peace corps volunteers to explore the scenery of my new home (and by scenery I mean beaches :) Plus being able to relate my fears and concerns with other foreigners has helped me tremendously to see how silly they are and to brainstorm ideas on how to get over my obstacles

-  I have a bed frame! Another week on the wet cement and I think my mattress would have been moldy through and through

-   a friend made me a make-shift closet (he jammed a laka-laka branch into the kiddy-corner and I put hangers on it) it’s the first time since May I haven’t had to store all of my clothes either in my suitcase or a cardboard box! Ahh the simple pleasures of life 

-  My neighbor’s cat had kittens and they’re going to give me one (!!) They say they’re going to give me a little black one – my parents back home say they’ll tell my cat Lilly back in the states about her adopted African sibling (fun name ideas are welcome so send ‘em on over!) 

-  A friend who’s a farmer here has been kind enough to give me a few big bags or mulch, peat, manure, straw, coconut shells…. So I had my first go at  making some compost piles this weekend (one above ground of brown materials, green materials and manure and one in-ground for food scrapes) and I planted a bunch of seedlings of herbs and veggies. I’ll keep you posted on whether my garden experiment is a bust or “bloom”! (yea yea yea, I know) 

-   I’ve found tutors to help me continue to improve my Portuguese and to begin to learn the local language here: Citswa. This latter language is pretty important for even though most everyone here can speak Portuguese, almost 99% of the conversations are in local language – from meetings to casual catch-up and gossiping. If I want to become part of this community I need to master this new language, which is a bit tricky because it’s my first non-romance language I’ve ever tried to learn 

-   I’m not supposed to start any work for the first 3 months here (it’s my “community integration” period), and then not expected to start any real projects the first year…. Yeah. Needless to say, after these first few weeks I’m already done with this crazy no-work concept (pshhhh). To fill in some of the vast amounts of free time I have (and to respond to an over-whelming demand here) I’ve decided to start………. an English club! Not much to do with health or even community development, but at the very least it’ll give me something to do in the evenings and help me to meet more people in the community, plus like I said, every other person that stops to talk to me on the street asks me to teach them English. I’m going to work with a local English professor who’s willing to volunteer his time as my counterpart, we made up fliers to put around town, and today I was even interviewed on the town’s only radio station to tell people about our exciting new club (I was so nervous!!) haha, not sure what exactly this will turn into but I’m hoping it will be a stepping stone to future bigger and more serious projects in the community! 

-   A friend of mine is opening a restaurant in town and I’ve been helping her paint the doors and walls. She’s really open to different ideas on what to do with the restaurant and I’m excited about what we’ve been throwing around. We’re talking about experimenting with American dishes to put in the menu, having themed days of the week… I think this could be fun way to integrate into the community and also experiment with the second goal of Peace Corps: “helping to promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of peoples served.” 

-   In 2 weeks I’m going to travel to another PCV’s site for the weekend to help paint a mural on HIV/AIDS with a group of adolescent girls. I’m hoping one day to start up my own  youth group here and maybe painting a mural of our own in my town, but for the time being I’m excited to help with this project and take mental notes on how to recreate it here. 

-   I’m starting to see my little ant-infested, leaky, and perpetually LOUD hut as home J 

Baby steps, but already I’m feeling much better than when I sat around pouting. I honestly don’t know what had come over me those first few days at site but I certainly am glad to get over myself and focus on what I came here to do!

Sending lots of love from Mozambique

Mailing Address!!

I opened a PO Box!!! Well, technically I'm sharing a box with about a dozen current PCVs in the area, being the resourceful / economically challenged folks that we are :) Good news is that they've had a perfect track record with every box that's been sent to them so fingers crossed we keep that record clean!

Please direct all future correspondence the following address:

Emilia Varanay
Corpo da Paz
C. P. 31
Maxixe, Inhambane Provincia
Mozambique

And as always, email updates are very VERY much appreciated :)

xoxo

And the fun begins.....

8/19/12

1 week in, 3.5 books down, 3 marriage requests declined, and I’m already tired of peanut butter and banana sandwiches…

I’ve learned a few things about myself these past few days. Like for example, I like my privacy. A lot. I’d always assumed I was an introvert, but something about having my boss be my next door neighbor be my surrogate mother and her children, grandchildren, nieces, uncles , etc. be my coworkers, neighbors, and surrogate brothers and sisters…. Well, you get the picture. They’re an absolutely wonderful family; very welcoming and friendly. I suppose it’s the stark contrast in expectations that has thrown me these initial few days. After these past 3 months of training where I was a guest in someone else’s home I was looking forward to a safe space to nest in and make my own; meanwhile they were looking forward to adopting a new member to their family and had already taken the liberty to decorate my home (which I finally took down today). While I was excited to take baths when I wanted and have a say over my own diet, I arrived to my new home with a steaming bucket waiting for me and the family patiently waiting for me to bathe so we could eat the dinner they’d prepared. Not only do we share the small yard, water supply, bathroom, and kitchen, but many people in the immediate and extended family all work in my boss/ “mother’s” organization.

Needless to say, this first week’s theme has been trying to find the delicate balance of disentangling myself enough to keep my sanity, but not too much to compromise a relationship I very much cannot afford to scar.

I have to remind myself that the fact that I have been welcomed with open arms into a new family is not the worst problem one could have; really it only has to a problem at all if I label it as one. Rationally, I know that in time we will all learn how to live with one another - but it’s just so much harder to remember when I’m living every awkward pull and tug between what they want and what I will give. Once I can build my own kitchen, get a door in the bathroom to keep the kids out, put a screen on my house’s door to keep the chickens out of my bedroom… once the family realizes I’m not going to join their church (no matter how much they try to convince me) and that I’m perfectly capable of going to the market without a chaperone… and of course once I bring down my own walls and accept their hospitality – well THEN we’ll be the happiest little family/ neighborhood/ organization in the whole village J

I’ve also learned that I had expectations about my service that I didn’t realize existed - and unsurprisingly, reality is much less romantic than my imagination’s version of where I would be right about now. Somehow I hadn’t expected so little space – physical and personal. The first few days I was no less than terrorized by children. They’d stick their faces and arms through my barred door and windows to watch every little thing I did, they’d run around my reed 2-room home screaming and hitting the walls, or they’d just sit on my veranda in front of my door crying, laughing, and/ or yelling things I couldn’t understand in their high-pitched Portuguese. Also, I’d never lived in a neighborhood where every house is arm’s throw from the other, where I can constantly hear the music from at least 3 neighbors’ homes at all times. Where is my garden going to be? Where can I put my compost? Where will my dog run free? Well, my future pup will just have to run around my neighbor’s yards.

Sorry to be complaining so much. If you couldn’t tell from the tone of this post, this first week has been a tad bit tough, both emotionally and mentally. I can’t quite put my finger on what about this experience living abroad in a foreign culture is different from all of the other times I lived alone in other countries. Perhaps it’s because it’s a longer time frame. Or perhaps it’s because for the first time I don’t have a clearly defined role. I’m not an exchange student and I’m not here to do a specific job. I’m a volunteer. My current objectives for the next 3 months are to observe and integrate, to understand and find places for improvement not just in my organization but in the entire community. It’s such a broad and open task that you’d almost assume that no matter what I did or didn’t do that I’d eventually learn about my surroundings and integrate to some degree or other. And yet, I find myself second guessing my every action. Which people are the most respected in this community that I should become close with? Who/ what/ where should I avoid that could potentially cause some people to not want to work with me? What will my work be? Where should I focus my energy? Should I paint murals downtown about malaria prevention methods? Create youth groups that focus on gender equality? Gather people together to start income generating projects. Try to build a library? Build an orphanage? Maybe I’m struggling because I have no direct supervisor to tell me what to do; the lack of direction is both exhilarating and terrifying. I can go anywhere and do anything I want and technically most everything I do will fall under my overarching goal of settling into my new home. Time is both a blessing and a curse for while I need time to understand what my role is and what my work will be, I can’t help but wonder if I could or should be doing something/ anything more productive at any given moment. Does staying home to cook fish curry and coconut rice with my host family count? What about shopping with my coworkers? Visiting different churches? Can walking around town talking with people really be considered work? Will simply going for my morning run every day and saying good morning to everyone I pass help the community get to know and trust me?

It’s funny. I knew I’d have difficulties here and there during my services but I never expected that simply beginning would be so challenging. Blegh! Okay time to wrap this up– it’s way past my bed time, almost reaching 9:30pm!!

But I supposed before I finish this post I should come clean and disclose the unfortunate news I’ve recently come across. No. My village doesn’t have a beach L . We have a dock that’s half a mile from my house, but alas, my neighbors discourage swimming with the mangrove trees. There are a good amount of lovely beaches within an hour from me, but none in my immediate vicinity. Whew, glad I got that off my chest. Family and friends – this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t still visit!!! I’m surrounded by palm, mango, banana, avocado, papaya and cashew trees, the ground is all sand, and there’re crabs, fish and prawns everywhere you look – so basically it’s as if I’m in a beach town without the mess of getting sand in your swim suit J

Até pronto (and feel free to email/ call WHENEVER YOU’D LIKE!!! Seriously. Call on me.)

-Ems

DAY ONE!!!

I passed all of my technical tests and knocked out my LPI exam with an "advanced-high" Portuguese language score (don't ask me how...!!!) 

After how many weeks of training? How many months of application writing? How many years of years of prepping for this momentous day? ... Today the newly appointed US Ambassador to Mozambique celebrated his first official act in his new position by swearing in the 18th group of Mozambique Peace Corps Volunteers, of which yours truly was indeed 1 of the lucky 28 members :)

So yes, today starts the 1st day of the next 2 years of my life as an official Peace Corps Volunteer in Mozambique!!! Said some teary goodbyes to my host family this morning, had the official swear-in this afternoon, will have my supervisor's conference this Friday + Saturday where I'll meet my future boss and/ or coworkers, and will head out on Sunday morning for my new home  (of which I know NOTHING about!!!) 

Big moves a-happening, but soon enough I'll FINALLY be settled down and be able to start my new life. It's a bit daunting to think the hard part hasn't even begun yet, but this process has been so incredibly long in the making that it almost feels a bit surreal and deja-vu since I've already daydreamed and imagined it so so so many times over. I've tried to keep any expectations at a minimum, but I'd be lying if I said I don't have some hopes and fears of what next week will bring. I'll be sure to keep you all updated with every little development, but please don't forget to write me a personal email  updating me on your own life   accomplishments and struggles!!

A hundred thanks to everyone who helped me along the way to this momentous day, I love you all and will continue to think of you often as I begin these first steps in my new chapter :)

xoxo

BIG NEWS!

Big news in the exciting world of mosquito nets and bucket baths…

Ready for this?

We received our site placements! [insert gasp] The decision written on that single sheet of paper held my entire future for the next 2 years of my life, no big deal. But yeah, I had a few nerve wracking days and sleepless nights leading up to the announcement (!!) Will I live by the coast in the south or in the mountains of the north? La out in the matu (which is portuglish for way out in the middle of nowhere) or in an urban city? Will be closest Peace Corps neighbor live next door or 9 hours away? WHO will my closest Peace Corps neighbors be? Will I work for a religious faith-based organization, a disorganized budding community organization, a structured international organization, a hectic underfunded hospital…? Will my house be in a quintal of another family (like a family compound), in a straw hut, a cement block, or a tin shed? Will I have electricity? Running water? Thousands of what ifs to consider, and if you know me then you know I’m a chronic planner (just a little bit.)

Okay, enough of the background info.

My new home town: the small rural district capital of Morrumbene in Inhambane province!! It’s near the coast which is nice because a) I’ll have access to fresh sea food and b) I’m pretty close to some dang beautiful beaches (and some awesome scuba diving!) The town is on the national highway so I should also have regular access to fresh local fruits and vegetables which is a biggie for me. I’m about 20 minute from Maxixe which is a bigger town/city where I can purchase anything not found in the smaller villages. From Maxixe I can take a 30min boat ride to Inhambane City, the provincial capital, which I’m told is a cozy beach town with a pretty ethnically diverse population. The city is 20min from Tofu beach which is supposed to be one of the most beautiful beaches in the country. That’s all I’ve gathered thus far on the town, but I’m sure I’ll be able to fill you all in with some more information once I get there in 2 weeks (I leave training on Aug 8^th, will stay in Maputo for a conference for a few days, but should be all moved in by the 13^th!)

My new job: I’ll be working with an organization called Kuvuneka that runs an OVC center (OVC = orphans and vulnerable children). The organization provides home based care and community outreach for PLWHA (people living with HIV/AIDS), and income generation projects. I’ll be doing activities with the kids, capacity building with the activistas, designing projects, monitoring and evaluating programs, writing grants, networking, and occasionally working with the larger organization ICAP at the local hospital.

Yep. Eight more days. Eight more days until I meet the community which will become my family for the next 2 years of my life. Where will I be 1 month from today? 14 months from today?  BAHHH!

On an unrelated note: I ran the 13mi loop last weekend with my minimalist shoes, a loaf of Namaacha bread, and my nalgene water bottle. It was mostly to scope it out so we decided to take our time and walk parts of it. Took us a solid 3 hours up and down and up and back down again the mountains of the south east Africa - it was absolutely gorgeous. I wish I could have brought my camera, but I didn’t want to risk having it stolen / didn’t want an extra item to carry. I have to say, not a single Mozambican was even slightly impressed with our run. It’s probably because us telling them we ran 21 KM equals about the normal amount they’d have to walk in a day anyways. Regardless, it was an amazing experience and I hope I can keep up running along the Mozambican countryside after I lose my 5am running buddies.

And in less uplifting news, my computer has a “short-cut virus” L which is why I wasn’t able to update you all on my site placement sooner. If anyone with regular internet access and half a brain for computers has any ideas on how to get rid of it I’d be much obliged! I’ve already ran all of the free anti-virus software I have on my computer (even on safe-mode) but they haven’t been able to remove it. I’m going to try to purchase and download real anti-virus software once I get to site and can get a modem to buy secure and steady internet connections, so if anyone has any recommendations on which one to go with please send me a line!

Okay, that’s the gist of things right now. Hope everyone back home is doing well - big hugs and kisses!

Okay, I’ve got to brag a little bit.

We had our Language Proficiency Interview (LPI) last week that evaluates our language proficiency based on the American Council of Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) scale. The possible rankings are: Novice Low, Novice Mid, Novice High, Intermediate Low, Intermediate Mid, Intermediate High, Advanced Low, Advanced Mid, Advanced High, and Superior. We need to reach Intermediate-Mid rating by the end of training in order to become a volunteer, and they give us one LPI mid-way through training in week 5 and then a final LPI at the end of training in week 10 in order to assess how we’re progressing and change things up if they notice anyone is struggling.

Considering the fact that I could barely say hello in Portuguese before coming here, I didn’t have very high expectations for my LPI results. I assumed that my mid-service LPI goal would be to reach Intermediate-Low, which is a pretty ambitious goal after only 5 weeks of a studying a new language. Reasonable.

Ready for this?

Advanced Low. Right??? At first I thought it was a mistake, but then I read the ACTFL blurb of what that level entails and I was shocked to realize that, yeah, I’m totally there! Granted, I still have a looooong way to go, but it was such a self-esteem boost to see how far I’ve progressed already in such a short time-frame. It definitely is a positive affirmation that I CAN do this, because if by “this” I mean go out to the middle of nowhere on my own and actually be productive/ make a difference/ help someone… then the first step I need is to be able to communicate with that person.

Okay, I’ll quit tooting my horn now.

Até logo!

“Welcome to travel in Mozambique"

Sorry for the hiatus in blog updates; things have been, well, busy. This past week had been our “site visit” week where all the current trainees go out in the field to spend a week living with a currently serving volunteer. The intended purpose of this activity is for us to get a better feel for what it will actually be like living alone in the “matu” (matu = waaaaay out there in the middle of nowhere) and working with our future organizations. It’s a reality check, a much-anticipated break/ vacation from the monotonous training schedule, and also a chance for us to figure out what is really important for us (like for example: having electricity in your home; having access to a big market; living close to a fellow PCV; working for a faith-based/ community/ non-governmental organization; being close to a beach… etc.) After the site visits we then have our site placement interviews, and thennnnnn (drum roll please…..) our site announcements!

So in some countries PC tries to send trainees to the sites where they will actually be serving, but since Mozambique is so dang BIG and so many darn volunteers, that’s impossible for us. Instead, all the trainees closed our eyes and picked names out of a hat to find out who would be randomly visiting whom. I picked the name of a girl up in Nampula province, which also just so happened to be the farthest northern site visit possible, which also just so happened to mean that I got to fly to my site instead of take a 9hr chapa (chapa = bus) like some other trainees, and to boot, it JUST SO HAPPENED that I got to spend nights in a hotel in the capital before and after my flights – pretty cool right?

I know that probably doesn’t mean much to 99% of the people reading this, but remember that the girl writing this blog entry has spent the past 5 weeks bathing by candle-light from a bucket of boiled water and a cup. Remember that this girl has had no say in her diet and has had her breakfast, lunch, dinner and every snack picked out, cooked and given to her – portions and all. Remember that she’s been living a as guest in a Mozambican family who gives her a 7pm curfew, makes her sweep her floor every-other day, scrub her flip-flops every week, re-make her bed every morning, hand-wash her bed sheets every 2  weeks…. Yeah. A flushing toilet, shower, and option in WHAT I want to eat and how much seemed like heaven. Needless to say, the rest of our training group hated me more than a little bit, but I was a-okay with that.

Me and 2 other trainees who were also flying to other sites left a day early, got to our hotel in Maputo, took our hour-long showers, and went out to a surprisingly delicious Filipino restaurant where I celebrated my good fortune with a glass of wine. Ahhh blissful ignorance.

The next morning we woke up at 4:30am to get to the airport at 5:30 for our 7am flight. And then it began:

First they said our names weren’t on the list, and that we weren’t on that flight. I showed them the printed out paper that clearly said our tickets were confirmed, and the man waived me away and told me to come back in a few hours to see if there were any free seats available after they boarded all the passengers. Now, my Portuguese has definitely progressed over this past month, but I knew it was no match for arguing my way onto a flight. I called up a PC staff to see if they could explain over the phone that there was a mistake and that I WAS on that flight, waited in line all over again, but when I got up to the counter the second time the man refused to talk to the guy on my cell phone and just ignored me standing in front of him. Fast forward a few hours when a total of 3 PC staff have all come to the airport personally to try to get us on the flight, after the first flight leaves, the second flight of the day’s boarding time comes and goes, and we’ve been sitting at the airport for 5 hours waiting. Luckily we’re able to get on the stand-by list and get on a 10:00am flight up north!

Only 3 hours late, no harm done!

Not quite. Flight leaves an hour late, has an unexpected pit stop half-way up, and then tells everyone to get off. I get off, get lost in this new airport, and eventually make my way back and flash my old ticket stub as I climb back into the plane (kind of had the feel of sneaking into a 2^nd movie at the movie theater).

Aaaaand we’re off again – whew!

Except after 10 minutes in the air the plane turns around and lands again to re-pack the luggage.

Yep.

That’s right.

So maybe an hour later we try again, and yes, eventually, by 4pm we get where we were supposed to be at 9am. Unfortunately there was still another leg of the trip via chapa to my site and by that point it was too late in the day to continue traveling so I crashed the night in a hotel (2^nd night in a hotel > 10 hours in an airport??)

The site-visit was wonderful: I ate lots of delicious food, met some lovely current volunteers, and had a great, albeit short (I got there Sunday afternoon and had to leave by Tuesday morning), visit! Only downside was that I was eaten alive at night – by what, I’d prefer to not know. I counted 29 bites on my left foot, 42 on my right foot, 12 on my left hand, 4 on my right hand, 3 bites on my left eye lid, 4 bites on my left cheek, 2 bites on my right cheek and 1 on my ear. You can just imagine what a looker I was by the time I left that village; I probably gave the poor children nightmares when they saw me. Again, not sure if they were mosquitos, fleas, spiders…. But regardless of where they came from, they itched and were ugly which was bad enough for me. BLAGH!

So Tuesday morning I make my way back to the airport, go to check in, and – what do ya know? – name’s not on the list again. Deja-vu. Same ordeal: you can wait on stand-by until a flight has room for you. So that’s what we did…. From 12:30 to 8pm, in an airport where conveniently every kiosk was magically closed and there just so happened to be no place at all in the immediate vicinity to go. Luckily I had bought a big bag of cashews earlier that day as a gift for my host family – needless to say it didn’t take very long for me to decide that I could buy them another gift in Maputo. I chowed down on those for a good few hours, walked in circles, lots of card games…. Of course the bathroom didn’t have toilet paper, running water, or soap, but it DID have a functioning automatic hand dryer!

Got on an 8:15pm flight. To add insult to injury, of the perhaps 100 seats available on that flight maybe 15 of them were occupied. Busy busy busy. I splurged and bought a 50Mt beer on the flight, and almost considered demanding seconds of the dessert to compensate me for my misery.

At the Maputo airport I almost chewed off a taxi driver’s head who wanted to charge me more than I thought the ride to the hotel would cost, and then, just to add a final layer to the cake, when I got to the hotel they didn’t have any reservations under my name. Up until this point I’d kept a relatively good sense of humor about the whole affair, but if it hadn’t been for another trainee who jumped in to help negotiate I probably would have lost my cool.

Of course, the room I was able to finagle my way into had no cold water in the shower so I took a quick scalding hot shower, and when I woke up that next morning in the hotel I had a HORRIBLE cough and sore throat L

I got back to Namaacha this evening and, let me tell you, no place looked more inviting than mai Cecilia’s house. I was SOSOSO happy for that lovely bucket bath, enjoyed every bite of rice and matapa, and am now all cuddled up warm and safe under my mosquito net. No more traveling, nope, no thank you. I’m staying put in Namaacha until I travel to my site next month (except maybe for day-trips, by land, far away from airports.)

Hopefully my next blog entry will include information on where I’ll be living and working for the next 2 years (!!!) and hopefully I’ll be bite-free and sick-free by then too… so much to look forward to eh?

Até pronto!!

xoxo

6/29/2012

Finishing up Week 4!! Or as my fellow volunteer phrased it this morning: 1 month down, 26 to go!

My 5:30AM running pals and I tend to compare it to a marathon: first few miles/ months are rough, there will inevitably be 1 (or a few) seemingly insurmountable walls, but then after getting over those walls we’ll catch the runners high and those middle months/ miles will just slide on by before we know it, and then those last few months/ miles will seemingly fly by. Of course, none of us have ever actually run a full marathon… haha, but I’d like to think that if I can do the PC marathon then one day I’ll be able to run one as well (sound logic, right?)

Actually, there’s a ~14 mile loop around Namaacha that my running palls and I want to run before we leave training - it goes up in the mountains and around the border between Mozambique and Swaziland. We ran it for about 5 miles yesterday morning and it was absolutely breathtaking running through the winding 1-lane road with 7ft tall grasses on both sides while the sunrise slowly painted the sub-Saharan mountain prairies around us. Me and another volunteer both ran our first half marathons this past year so we’re relatively familiar with the training regimen necessary to prepare our bodies for 2 or more hours of running - but we’ll see if we’re actually motivated enough to actually build up our mileage from 5-14 miles in 1 month! Not to mention the small obstacle that I only brought my minimalist shoes with me (which really shouldn’t be used for runs over 3-5mi) and left my trainers at home…. Oops. L

Okay, sorry I'd wanted this blog post to be longer but it's time to run back to training.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MAMA!!!

xoxox

Alo alo!

Some people have asked me again how to contact me here so I'm going to repost some contact info:

If anyone wants to call me (I'd recommend doing it via skype) you can call either of these 2 numbers:
82-710-8670
84-409-8427

And if anyone wants to send me a letter or small package you can send it to this address:

Emily Varanay, PCV
Corpo da Paz/ U. S. Peace Corps
C.P. 4398
Maputo, MOZAMBIQUE

And to decrease the chances of someone stealing the package they recommend adding religious phrases or symbols (eg. send it to "Sister Emily Varanay" or whatnot.)

Big hugs and kisses to all of your wonderful friend and family members already sending me snail-mail-love!!!  :)

xoxo 

my room: (Mama Cecilia says I need to take off my mosquito net and make my bed every morning - so many chores!!!)

Mama Cecilia and me decked out in our capulanas ready for a full day of cooking!

Nelly and our AMAZING cake!!!

21/6/12

Doing some mid-week blogging here since I have a little free time (no TPC tonight, woot woot!)

I know a lot of people are still emailing me wanting to know more of the day-to-day stuff so I’ll talk a little about what I did today – it’s not all that interesting but at least it can give a glimpse of my daily activities J

This morning we had language class at my house from 7:30AM – 9ish. Today’s lesson included every piece of vocabulary under the sun for anything and everything related to clothes (from shoes, belts, different types of hats, bed linens, sewing machines, etc. you name it, I can tell you the Portuguese counterpart.)

One of the native pieces of clothing here is the capulana which is basically just a large rectangular piece of cloth with pretty (or occasionally not-so-pretty) designs printed on it. Women here use it for everything. Like, seriously, EVERYTHING. One of the current volunteers here said she was going to write a book called the 101 uses of the capulana, which another current volunteer corrected saying it should be titled the 1,000,001 uses. They can wear it as a skirt, a dress, a shawl, a head scarf to hold up your hair, they use it as a towel when they bathe, as an apron when they cook, they can wrap it around their head when they carry large heavy materials balanced on their heads, or they tie their small children around their backs with it…. They can use it as a blanket, as a wall if they need privacy to do their business, they can wrap it around children as diapers, or themselves as underwear, etc. etc. etc… **let me clarify however that the capulana is cleaned in between these uses** ha, in case there’s any confusion.

Back to class: we also learned colors, their Mozambican symbols, the national holidays (all jam packed in our 1.5 hr lesson!) Love me some early morning vocab!

Afterwards we went to the Peace Corps “Hub” for technical training – today we learned a lot about GI issues (even got a take-home sheet: the Bristol Stool Chart. I’m very much hoping I don’t ever need to use that!)

Our country director also visited from Maputo today to perform a Myers Briggs training for those of us that wanted to find out our personality type. I didn’t take the test since I’d already taken one recently at my last job, and also a FyroB test last year for my grad program. Plus one of the other volunteers had forgotten her test at home so I let her use mine – good Samaritan deed. Also, I have to say, every time I take the MBTI I always end up with a different result. I don’t really see the point of it as a whole since it’s all relative to your surroundings and what is expected of you at that point in your life. I can be super extraverted, sensing, thinking and judging at work, but then totally introverted, intuitive, feeling and perceptive with my friends. It doesn’t mean either side of me is a truer representation of who I really am just because I’m capable of adapting to whatever the occasion deems appropriate. And I think that’s true for most people; nobody’s ever just one personality - the beauty is in our complexity.

Okay, enough with the tangents and back to training: after going home for a quick lunch I went back to the hub to play some soccer (and by soccer I mean we just juggled the ball in the air for a half hour) and then afternoon training. Today we went into perma-gardening techniques which included how to build a compost, which horticulture is most common here, how to build our beds and berns so that they won’t be washed away in the rainy season or cyclones, etc. I actually really loved that session, it was probably my favorite so far. Tomorrow and Saturday we’re going to build perma-gardens with the trainers in order to apply what we learned which I’m really excited about. Added bonus: they asked my host mother if we could do it in our house so I’ll have half the volunteer group over tomorrow bright and early at 7:30 to dig up my back yard and plant my host family a new garden – woot woot!

After our technical training ended at 4:30 today we had a mini chefe meeting (my language class voted me as our group’s chefe [chefe = chief] so I meet with all the other chefes and the PST director [PST = pre-service training] to go over logistical updates and issues that may have occurred that week.) Afterwards two of the visiting volunteers from this week (every week we have current PC volunteers come visit to help with training) hosted a little get together for us all to hang out with them and ask them questions outside the work-training environment. The visiting volunteers this week have been absolutely great, to say the least. Both of them have been fantastically successful with their work at their sights and they’ve shared some awesome stories and tips to our training group. It was funny because one of them looked very familiar when he introduced himself in Monday’s session, and after training we realized that not only had we both gone to BU at the same time, both lived in the Hyatt our first years (he was a year after me though), we both spent a lot of time working at the BU Community Service Center, did the same study-abroad trip to Ecuador as language students (different semesters though), AND we interned together at the International Institute of Boston - same boss and everything. Small world eh?!  Funny how certain types of people tend to pop up into your lives over and over again, and how common it is if you look for it.

Ok, dinner’s probably going to start soon so I should wrap this up. Oh, before I finish though I promised I’d let you know how the cake turned out! So let me set the scene: no oven, no recipe, no measuring cups or measurements at all for that matter, no milk, 1 bowl, 1 spoon, 3 eggs, a very old block of margarine, some flour, salt, sugar, dry powdered creamer, dry powdered custard mix, water, a few packets of expired baking soda, some lime rind, and an electric contraption that you plug into the wall and it heats up these 2 coils, between which a bundt pan is placed, and then we put a plate on top and a towel. Mix it all together with mama Cecilia’s never failing Mozambican cooking magic and VOILA: an amazing cake! I was utterly speechless, per usual. I’d love to be able to contribute something one day besides chopping up veggies – only thing I’ve made for them so far is guacamole, which they were NOT a fan of (the avocados here are HUGE and very sweet so they usually mash them up with lime and sugar for dessert. Obviously having their dessert food mixed with onions, salt and tomatoes wasn’t a big hit.) If anyone has a good banana bread recipe that doesn’t call for any crazy ingredients please email it to me! (I can find fresh milk here if it calls for it.) Thanks in advance J!!

Xoxox

Ems

Week #2

Feels like it’s already been months since I left the U.S., crazy to think I’ve only been in training for 2 weeks. 8 more weeks to go until my assignment actually STARTS! I don’t quite know my own feelings towards whether I want the next 2 months to go by quickly or slowly. On the one hand I’m very eager to not be a guest in someone else’s home, to meet my new community, to start actually working instead of sitting around all day watching lectures… But then that means I’m all alone. No more mama Cecilia, irmã Nelly, no more Peace Corps staff next door or fellow volunteers to work out with and  hang out with. Scary!! Ha, no point even thinking about time I suppose. Time will go on however it wants regardless of my wants or fears.

Okay, enough of the mushy feelings. I know a lot of people have been asking me to post pictures  - and I certainly have enough to quench your thirst – problem is that internet in Namaacha, well, it doesn’t exactly exist. There’s one computer in town with internet that you can pay to use but it takes about 20 minutes to send one email, so uploading pictures is kind of out of the question. There’s also a hotel in town with wi-fi, but unfortunately the owner of the hotel has some sort of vendetta against Peace Corps volunteers and chewed me and 2 other volunteers out when we asked to pay to use it. Even though the lobby and café were completely empty and we offered to purchase food/ beverages and pay to use the hotel’s wi-fi, somehow this was still unacceptable to him.

Evidently he’s never heard of the theory of supply and demand.

It’s the only place in the entire village with wi-fi, and because he refuses to let us 28 internet-starved Americans buy it in his hotel, the only option we’re left with is to go to a nearby bar and try to pick up any wandering connection from the hotel anyways. Only works sometimes, and is always pretty weak, which makes uploading anything at all a painstaking test of patience. I asked our Peace Corps staff if we could set up wi-fi in our PC “hub” but evidently the PC Washington office won’t finance it because we’re not official volunteers yet L So, long story short is that y’all going to have to be patient with the pictures!

This morning I washed my weeks’ worth of clothes. I swear, I’m going to be so dirty when I don’t have mama Cecilia forcing me to wash everything all the time. No way I’m taking 3 baths a day, sweeping the floor every other day, or washing my sheets every 2 weeks (by hand mind you) when I’m living solzinha. Nu-huh. This new life makes my life back in Washington DC look like a pig-house! Ha, no, I’m sure it’s warranted since there’s so much dust here. It was a little sad; after a few hours and countless buckets of water washing my sheets, towels and clothes this morning, when I went to hang it all up on the wire in the yard I noticed how windy the day had become. Walls of dust swirled around the yard, and mama Cecilia just shook her head and told me my clothes were all going to get dirty again while they dry. Alas, at least I tried to be clean.

Another thing I think I’ll do differently when I’m solzinha is left-overs. We don’t do them, at all, and it blows my mind. We spend hours cooking everything from scratch then to just discard everything we don’t eat.

I mean, like the other day we made this matapa dish that took all afternoon to make… we have this huge mortar and pistol (the pistol is a huge wooden stick that comes up my shoulders) where we grind bags of peanuts into a fine flour –NOT EASY. It takes your entire body to crush the nuts and at least half hour of repetitive up and down and up and down… then sift it out, then repeat…. Next step was to crack open a few coconuts and spend another 20-30 minutes shredding all the meat from inside by hand. Course you also have to boil the cassava leaves, add all those other secret magical ingredients, and make the soup, and the salad, and the rice…. For dessert we usually have fruits, my favorite is when we mash up avocados with lime and a little sugar (I slice up bananas with it.)

All this food and preparation for the three of us, every meal, every day.

Not to mention the huge effort it is to just GET the food and haul it back to the house – I went with mama Cecilia to the market yesterday. It’s at least a half hour walk away to get to “Shop Right”, which despite the deceiving name is a huge bee hive of a market spreading out as far as you can see. You can find anything from dry legumes, fresh produce, boxed cereals, yogurts and milks, dried fish, live chickens, shoes, clothes, bags, jewelry, cloths, cleaning supplies… anything you can find in Namaacha you’ll get at Shop Right. We spent an hour or two wandering around there, and by the time we left mama Cecilia had several huge bags of goods to bring home. One of the heavier bags (which I could barely carry with 2 hands) mama tied up tight and, defying the law of gravity, picked it up over her head and balanced it on top of her head, like no big thing, then walked along with it perfectly balanced on her head. She even tried to take the other heavy bag to carry in her hands but I had to put my foot down and I told her there was no way in the world I was going to let her carry both heavy bags with my hands empty. A mixture of “ingrate” and “weakling” are the words I’d generally use to describe myself most of the time here.

Anyways, moral of the story is that when I live by myself I’m totally going to make every meal I make last as long as possible.

I’ll be a dirty, lazy cook J Apologies in advance for anyone who’s planning on visiting me!

Okay, I’m going to try to get to the bar and upload this post before dinner prep starts – me and Nelly are going to make mama Cecilia dinner tonight, we’re also going to try to make a cake. Not sure how that’s going to go without an oven, but I’m excited to try!

Xoxo,

-          Emily

PS: HAPPY FATHER’S DAY pops! Love ya old man, hope Michelle & Stephanie made you your favorite peanut butter cookies and mom let you play video games and work out at the gym all day J big hugs!

1 week in. Hard to believe after so many years of anticipation and preparation that a week has already flown by. (what’s that saying again? Time flies when you want to enjoy every minute of something??)

Let me start with my host family: Cecilia and Nelly. I’ve had many host-family situations before in the past but all seem to pale in comparison. Cecilia (or minha mai – my mother) is in her 60s and still wakes up at 5am everyday to gather water, start the charcoal fires for our baths (it’s expected in this culture to take at least 2-3 bucket baths per day, which at first seemed a bit extreme but after a few hours outside and you see your dust-caked feet it tends to make more sense), she  makes our breakfasts, snacks, lunches and dinners from scratch every time (they don’t have a refrigerator so no left overs), keeps her house spotless (I’ll get back to the house later), washes all of the clothes by hand, tends her fruit and vegetable gardens out in the yard, and is still all smiles all the while. Did I mention she’s in her 60s? Yeah. Amazing.

 And then there’s little Nelly, who’s only 12 years old and lives apart from her parents and 4 younger siblings to stay with her grandmother here in Namaacha, Mozambique (the rest of her family lives in Johannesburg, South Africa.) She’s also up at the crack of dawn helping with everything, Mai only calls her name once and then you see Nelly running with 2 huge buckets of water as big as herself (I have trouble carrying one with only nominal spillage), she cleans, washes clothes, cooks…. And when she has a break in her “chores” (if you can call it that, but it’s not really since they need to do these things to survive) she runs to do her T.P.C. (trabalho para casa – or home work). My favorite part about Nelly though is not how selfless, helpful, independent and mature of a 12 year old she is, but her huge smile and amazing sense of humor. When we eat at the table I only have to catch her eye for a split second before she cracks up giggling and laughing. We teach each other songs when we wash the dishes and sing and dance when we do laundry outside on the rocks (her favorite singers are Rianna, Beyonce and Chris Brown – go figure.) Yesterday at dinner she asked me if we have clouds in America, I said yes, if we have the same sun in America, I said yes, if we have the same moon in America., and finally how America could have the same sun as Africa. I followed dinner with a brief tutorial of the solar system and how the earth orbits around the sun… So while she teaches me how to wash my pantyhose in buckets on rocks and laughs at how ridiculously bad I am at getting the dirt out of my socks, I teach her about how in in the United States our schools don’t end at noon but go all day, sometimes even after the sun goes down, and that most people don’t stop school at 15 or 18 but can continue to study for years and years (she had a good laugh when I told her I was still technically in school myself.) Such a goofball. I’d like to think that if I ever have children they will be little Nelly replicas, but somehow I don’t think that’s possible.

Quick picture of our village & house: Namaacha was built originally for a few hundred Portuguese families to have 2^nd weekend or summer homes out in the Suburbs of the capital (it’s about an hour and a half drive from Maputo). After the war for independence in the 60s and all the Portuguese left, the government re-appropriated many of the abandoned homes. Since then the town has expanded exponentially to a few tens of thousands of people (I think, might have to double check my numbers) but that the basic gist of the village – homes that you can tell were once beautiful are now decaying empty shells. So while we have wooden finished floors, they are worn thin, the marble kitchen countertops are in pieces, many homes have appliances like refrigerators and toaster ovens that are never turned on but used as shelves and storage space. There are bars and planks jutting out of rooms where you can tell a former owner had planned to add an addition but never finished, and it seems like it may forever stay that way. In my house for example we have a bathroom with a toilet, sink, and bathtub (unlike many other volunteers whose families have outhouses and pits in the back yard) but the water has long past been turned off so while you can still pour water down the tub and do your business in the toilet, there are several buckets and jugs of water in the bathroom to manually flush the water down or wash yourself with. The same in the kitchen, where you can see the several huge jugs of water and canvass bags of grains and vegetables replace what once must have been a very pretty European kitchen. My room is big and gets lots of sunlight (which I feel a bit bad about since Nelly and Mai share a smaller room). I have a big closet (no hangers though so I just drape all of my clothes over the bar), a chair (that I use to put all of my school books on), a trunk, a night stand and a bed. I hang my mosquito net over my bed with string that I tie to the window sill and closet, but every morning Mai says I must take it down, take apart my bed (blankets, sheets, covers and all) hit them all a few times to clean, and then re-make my bed. Then sweep the floor, and then take my 1^st bucket bath of the day (my alarm goes off at 5:30 or 6am every day, except on Sundays when I’m told I can sleep in until 6:30!) It’s amazing how much we take things like running water and electricity to cook with for granted, and how normal life can still be without those luxuries. My host family has so little and yet is by far the cleanest, welcoming, and loving host family I’ve ever had the pleasure to live with. Only 1 week in and I already feel totally at ease living here.

What else? Oh my Portuguese has been going great! I already understand 70% of what people say to me and can talk back (my ability to communicate is still rudimentary but I rarely get in situations where I can’t express myself or understand someone.) I’m reading Portuguese books in my free time and translating for other volunteers in our language classes – I think the people in my class must be beginning to dislike me since I’m always the dork asking the professor for extra homework. My background in Spanish and French has definitely helped me understand and get the basics of this new romance language, but there are lots of little differences I need to remember. Like for example, in portuguese it’s estudante while in Spanish it’s estudiante, or trabalho/ trabajo, esse/ ese, mulher/ mujer, irmao/ hermano…. They’re so similar I’m sure that when I start writing in Portuguese I’m going to go a little crazy!

And my group of volunteers is great, everyone makes a big effort to be friendly and support one another (today after language class some of us got together for a yoga session and quick pow-wow.) Unfortunately, already 3 of our 31 have decided that this isn’t the right choice for them and they’ve gone home (1 week in and we’re already down to 28!) But the PC staff have been wonderful, very thorough and attentive to our training. Speaking of, I often have to remind myself that this IS job training and not just another study abroad program, for while many aspects are similar, after a few months I’m not going home but going off on my own to apply everything I learn in another foreign community. Needless to say, I take lots of notes J

Today we’ve taken a fieldtrip into Maputo with our language classes as an excuse to buy cell phones, and tomorrow a few of us volunteers plan to go for a 4mile run to a nearby waterfall at 7:30am.  Annnnd that’s about it for now. Hope everyone back home is doing well – big hugs and kisses !

Até logo!!