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!!