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!!

a few steps back

okay

I think I need to recap a little now. I know I mashed these last few months into a few sentences but with all the kindness, thoughtfulness, and love that the people of my life had poured onto me the very least I could do is give them a little blog recognition!

now where to begin? Let's start with work. I cannot say enough how incredibly luck I had been with my first job out of college. I know it sounds like a cliche but I really felt like part of a family at the IDB, a huge latino family :) my colleagues, my boss, my supervisors, everyone was just so caring and fun-loving that it was a very difficult decision to leave work 2 weeks earlier than expected (yes, I had to have weeks of family and friends counsel me in order tell my work that I needed to leave mid April instead of at the end of the month.... pathetic or just plain love?) They took me out to some awesome lunches, breakfasts, froyos, HHs, and then to top it off they threw me an AMAZING going away party. Complete with Mozambican music, a Mozambican table cloth, food, cake, decorations, fun facts, and gifts for my travels:

Thank you so much FMS!!!!

whew, okay, next I want to thank my beautiful friends. My blondie and red head took me out on a full-day of adventures including breakfast at my favorite local coffee shop NS, rented a car, took me to a vineyard and then to a delicious farm-table restaurant (all of which complete with personal guitarist and barbershop quartet:

miss you both terribly (comment directed to the striped men of course)

Some other lovely friends took me out on my last night in DC for a night of celebrating, dancing, and, of course, roasting! they had speeches prepared, dances choreographed, videos taped, props, and so much good humor and love that I spent the entire night laughing and crying (either from embarrassment, laughter or sadness is up for debate!) We posted some of the videos on youtube but here are links to some of the most popular: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ru0Am5s7T1g

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f92OgsjG1QM

it was an epic night and I am so so grateful for everyone who was a part of it. thank you for making my last night at home so memorable.

A special thanks to my wonderful roommate (also referred to roommate for life, RFL) without whom I most definitely would have been able to get my life together to be where I am right now. She's honesty one of the most amazing women I've been lucky enough to meet, let alone live with for several years. xoxo

whew, okay so after I left work, finished my semester (with straight As believe it or not!), said good bye to dear friends in DC, moved all of my life up to my parent's home in CT (all of this within a matter of 2 weeks), I spent another 2 weeks unpacking my boxes, packing my bags, and traveling around CT, VT, MA and NY saying more goodbyes.  It was stressful, hectic, and very rushed but I was able to fit in most of the people I loved (and if I wasn't able to see a few of you I'm so sorry!) My little cousin is also moving to Africa with the Peace Corps so we were able to share some family functions and compare packing situations (although he'd been packed and ready weeks in advance whereas I had my packing gurus come the night before my flight to stay up with me and pack until the wee hours of the morn.) All and all, it was filled with encouraging wishes and loving goodbyes. If it hadn't been for all of my childhood best friends, BU besties, and wonderful family members there's no way I would have been able to get on that plane. Love you all so much.

WHEW!

Throughout all of these emotional and stressful last weeks I'd managed to stay composed, not breakdown and not have any panic attacks (for those who know me well this may shock you.) The moment did finally come though, as I was sure it would. My parents had driven me to the airport at 6am on Tuesday morning. My mother was so strong and didn't cry once while kissing me goodbye and my father was a rock, as he always is (despite the fact that he would be getting on a plane himself later that day to fly to Turkey for about a month). They stood and watched me as I shuffled through security (the guards had to take everything out of my carry-on because of the sharp edges on my flash cards - go figure.) And as I walked out of the gate onto the dingy plane from New Haven, CT to Philadelphia, PA I looked behind me to see them standing by the fence in the closest corner of the parking lot waving good bye. I climbed onto the plane, (my huge bags took up an entire extra seat behind me) and as the flight took off and I watched them waving into he distance the tears silently streamed down my cheeks. Not because I was afraid, not because I was sad, but because I was so incredibly grateful for their unconditional love. All of the people I've said good bye to this past month have been so surprisingly compassionate, giving and thoughtful - I honestly cannot understand why or how I deserved so much love in my life but I will carry it with me these next two years (and do't forget - it's ONLY TWO YEARS!) I'll be back before you know it, promise ;)

Okay. Now that I've caught you up on my past few weeks, here's a taste of the next 10: I will be living in Namaacha, Mozambique (on the border with Swaziland) with a woman named Cecilia who is 62 years old and her 12 year old granddaughter Neli. While other female volunteers will be set up with households of 5-8 people including several men and women in their 20s and 30s, I could not ask for a better set-up than the hand I've been drawn. I'm so very much looking forward to meeting my new family tomorrow, and hopefully the next post I write will be as positive as I'm feeling tonight (they call this period the honeymoon phase of our PC experience... ;)

big hugs from my last night in Maputo!

xoxo

HERE!!!!


Sorry for the lack of posts, life has just been a big blur recently. the trip here was epic (to say the last) of at least a full day of traveling, but today was our first day of in-country training.  which also means, first round of shots and medications (woohoo!) We're staying in a "luxury hotel" in the nice part of the city for the first few days (hence the ability to purchase internet) and then we drive out to our training village on Sunday night. I'm going to spend the next 3 months with the host family there (here's hoping they're nice!) it looks like we can purchase phones here with internet connection to check their email and stuff for ~ $100 so I'll probably do that (especially since we might not have internet availability in our 2-year site). 


kk, time to run - after a full day of training I'm going to hit the gym and then pool with some other volunteers (might as well take advantage of the facilities, don't know when the next time we'll have these will be!!)


I promise for more detailed posts in the future!


xoxo
emily