The Deep Breathe Before the Storm (i.e. my last week before "real" Africa)

ALERT: New address! 

            Irma Amanda Walker

            Rua Dar-Es-Salam, nr 14

            Bairro Central, Caixa Postal 526

            Nampula, Mozambique

This week is my last week in Namaacha, the village that hosted all the volunteers for training.  It’s unbelievable that two months ago to this day I first stepped foot in the country.  To be honest, it still doesn’t feel like Africa to me.  Sure, I take bucket baths and the power goes out more often than it stays on, but this isn’t what I expected.  Also, having our host mothers make all our meals for us doesn’t hurt either.  What I am trying to say is that Namaacha is pretty well off by Mozambican standards.  The majority of the people speak Portuguese, and there aren’t many starving or homeless people.  Even many of the parents are educated.  This isn’t a very good representative of what Mozambique is really like.  We are fortunate to have our training in such an affluent community, while we learn about the culture and slowly adjust in.  Many of the volunteers agree, and we think that Namaacha was a great stepping-stone into the matu. 

Matu is the Portuguese word for bush.  That is where the majority of us are going…to places where it’s easier to describe the bushes surrounding your house because there aren’t any other landmarks.  I am one of the more lucky ones: the house I am moving into has an indoor bathroom (no running water, but still), electricity, and reliable cell phone service.  All in all, I’m still pretty far ‘out there’, even in Mozambican standards. 

During site visits, one of my friends visited Invinha (my future site) and it took her 3 days of travelling just to arrive at the house.  Day 1 was flying to Nampula, and then it was two days of chapa rides to my site.  So, it’s only a little of the beaten path.  A site visit is when the training volunteers leave Namaacha for a week in groups of 1-4 people and live with a current volunteer.  I went to the Gaza Province (not to be confused with the real Gaza.  I don’t think the Peace Corps would continue to receive it’s funding if they sent us there.) in Chonguene which is right near the ocean.  It was beautiful, and I loved my time away from training, just relaxing and seeing what it would be like living in a smaller village. 

Here’s a picture of the Indian Ocean (this was my first time ever seeing it!):

On a random side note, all the volunteers got together and had a Thanksgiving dinner.  We were shocked to find that there were turkeys and cranberry sauce available in Mozambique.  I received a call from my family on Thanksgiving day and it was really great hearing all their voices and talking to cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents that I haven’t talked with since arriving.  (I miss you guys!)  Okay, back to the less important and more boring stuff…I feasted until I couldn’t hold any more.  Each volunteer helped out to make this happen and it was so worth it.  Here’s a picture of the evidence of that filling day:

Some children looking on at the feast:

While I’m on tangents I also killed my first chicken, here I am post operation:

And this was our dessert after the chicken dinner (no power included of course)…yes Brubaker family, you can be jealous!:

I’m going to miss having a family and being able to see all the volunteers whenever I want to, but it will definitely be refreshing having alone time, not worrying about offending your family if you yawn or sit Indian style, and not having to go to hours upon hours of training classes six days a week.  Namaacha is also a really good size where it’s not a city, but it’s big enough to have a market 7 days a week, fresh bread, and a larger market twice a week.  If I want a good market I’ll probably have to travel to Gurue once I get to Invinha. 

Here’s my bucket list of things to do in the last week: climb the water tower, pass my language test, make a dessert for my family, go for a walk down a random street leading off into the mountains and talk to the locals that live there, and finally, just enjoy this wonderful little town. 

I very excited to go and find the little hidden pleasures in Invinha too just like I did in Namaacha:

Namaacha on a day with good weather

Well, I guess that’s all for now! I miss you all and I hope you all had wonderful thanksgivings! 

BREAKING NEWS! Site placement!

BREAKING NEWS!   I have my site placement!  I’m going to Invinha in the Zambezia Province.  I couldn’t be happier. 

As my Peace Corps Country Director told me today, I have the most beautiful site placement in all of Mozambique volunteers.  I am in a little village surrounded by mountains.  I am taking over a site from a previous education volunteer, her name is Annie.  Here’s her blog if you want to take a quick look at where I’m going to live:

http://anniebtakesonmozambique.blogspot.com/

Here are some more pictures and sites to check out:

http://apadrinhamento.webs.com/index-en.html

http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/invinha

http://www.panoramio.com/photo/61910371

Tea plantations surround me, the temperature is cold (this is was my one request above all others…I despise the heat and have a hard time functioning in it), I am in a small town, but I’m a 15 minute drive away from the district capital, Gurue.  The market in Invinha doesn’t have the best options to choose from, but Gurue has everything that I will need.  My site is a little hard to get to, tucked away in the mountains, but that’s fine with me.  It has great hiking, running trails, etc.

            More breaking news, I’m not supposed to teach biology now, but math.  I’m actually a little more excited for this!  I’m more comfortable teaching math than biology, but then again, this is the Peace Corps and my subject will probably change three more times before I get to site in a month.  My average class size will be about 50 students, which is much less than the average number of students in the country.  Annie said that we have a pretty great school system too, and the fact that it is religious tends to mean that the students have better Portuguese and are a little smarter. 

            I have a roommate named Hannah who is great.  She is going to teach English at the same school with me.  We live in a Catholic community, which is safe, and with minimal corruption, especially in comparison to the rest of the country.  Even better, the nuns won’t care that I am atheist!  Annie is a practicing Jew and they love her.  The nuns are very open minded and are apparently hilarious.  They are Annie’s closest friends along with her students and colleagues.  They run the local school there, and my director is a female.  This is very exciting, because I was slightly worried about having a male director. 

            In Mozambique, the majority of directors are males—mine is the first female one I’ve heard about—and they tend to have power and control issues.  Because Peace Corps volunteers are American, we are at a higher risk for our director’s ‘desiring’ us, which can cause problems, especially if we do not return or share the feelings.  I’m really happy about my director.  Annie says she’s great! 

            I’m inheriting a fully stocked house with beds, all spices and kitchen supplies (stove, fridge, etc), and other furniture.  We have electricity and an indoor bathroom, but no running water.  The water pump is a few houses away, but when that’s not working we can go to the river.  We’re also inheriting a dog called Devin, who is great and gets food by himself.  Annie recommended to us to get him a playmate, which I have no problem doing!  We also might get a cat to handle the bugs and small snakes. 

            Here are some fun facts: The nuns are excited to meet us and cook delicious food for us, I live in a community with other teachers, a small walk from the school, I might also teach computers, I have a science lab at my school (this is rare), I have a clinic in my town and can help out whenever I want, my school has a boys soccer team…AND a girls team (pretty rare), I also have a primary school in my community, and finally, my community cannot wait to meet me and Hannah. 

Here are some pictures that I got from a volunteer that visited that site! (The pictures are random and just show the rooms and area around my soon to be life!)

            

Mozambican flag

October 30^th

A few different people have asked me questions about this topic, so here it is—the Mozambican flag.  For those of you whom have seen it, it’s pretty interesting but it leaves the viewer with questions.  For those that haven’t seen it, well look no further.

The flag of Mozambique

Why the gun, and hoe, what’s the significance of the colors.  It’s actually pretty interesting.  I’ve mentioned the civil war a few times now.  After the war the Republic of Mozambique created this flag. 

The green signifies the riches of the soil, the red signifies the blood shed over the fight for their freedom against the Portuguese colonists, the black signifies the entire continent of Africa, the yellow is the riches of the agriculture and natural resources in Mozambique, and the white stands for the peace and fairness of the Mozambican people. 

The star is the spirit of the solidarity of the Mozambican people toward neighboring countries.  The book, hoe and gun are casted together on the flag to signify the symbols of a stronger and more prosperous country.  The book represents knowledge, the hoe is for the hard work of the Mozambican people, and the gun stands for the spirit and fight of Mozambicans.  

Festivities, trips, and dangerous happenings

This past Sunday I went to my first fiesta.  My mom told me that my aunt and uncle (my dad’s sister’s family) were accepted to receive a loan for some much needed money.  They were going to use this money to open a new store and buy some clothes for their family.  What I don’t understand about Mozambicans is that many people spend money they don’t have because it is expected.  In this case, my aunt and uncle need this money to buy new clothes and open the store, so they spend a lot of money putting on a fiesta.  Many families also pool their income each month.  Let’s say for example there are four families sharing part of their income.  Each month a different family gets all the money so that they can buy a bigger item like a refrigerator or to fix a car’s windshield or the likes.  That family is expected to put on a big party for all the families that month, which costs a great deal of money.   What was once a good idea in theory, just turns into a bad one after they spend most of that money on the party.  I’m still trying to figure it out. 

            Anyways, back to the fiesta.  A few different families showed up to the party including one of my close volunteer friends and another volunteer’s family.  Our families instantly tried sitting us next to each other telling us we could speak English to each other and have fun.  While that was great, we also wanted to meet the locals, work on our Portuguese, and learn from their culture.  There was plenty of food, beer, ducks, goats, and children running around.  Later in the night I was dancing with my two younger sisters’ and my mom and aunt even came in for a little while.  Zinha, my 13-year-old sister is a really good dancer, and I was trying to learn some of the local dances.  Let’s just say ‘trying’ was the key word in that last sentence.  My friend Yuri also got roped into learning one of the male dances, which was pretty funny to see. 

            Below is a picture of my siblings in the back of my dad’s chapa (the local taxi’s) on our way to the fiesta.  Left to right is Zinha, Zulmira, Yula (in front), and Miguel. 

Above I'm holding Yula (age 9) in my arms and then below that I have Zinha (age 13) on my back. 

            Other than the fiesta, this week has been pretty similar to last week.  I am starting to have mini break throughs with my Portuguese, where I am just beginning to have full conversations without a pauses where I ask them to repeat, or I ask them how to say _____ in Portuguese, or I just can’t think of the right word.  I am also beginning to understand when they talk in Portuguese much more, which has been infinitely helpful.  It was pretty exciting when I realized it was happening! 

            The only other topic of note this week was that we visited different schools around the region and had a history lesson on Mozambique.  The school visit was fascinating and different than I expected it to be.  I went to a pretty nice, private secondary school (high school) that had an agricultural base rather than the normal four year public secondary schools.   Agriculture schools are only three years and don’t have as many specific subject classes like we do in the US.  Instead they learn more about raising animals, growing plants, and maintaining properties.  The students there took care of hundreds of chickens, dozens of cows, they worked in the fields every class day (each class had a different plot of land), they were even taught how to cross two different species of trees so that a fruit tree had a stronger and healthier base.  They were using some pretty advanced techniques.  I was also shocked, and jealous that the teachers butcher a cow and the class dissects is as part of a science lab on organs and the body.  Here are a few pictures of my visit. 

I was also able to sit in on one of the classes at the school.  There was a 4:1 male to female ratio in the class of about 25 students.  Normally class sizes are much bigger.  The teacher had all the important topics on the board, she used examples, and she asked the students for more.   It was obvious they had already learned this subject, so I don’t know if they were trying to make a good impression on the Peace Corps Trainees or if they were reviewing, but I’d have to take a guess that it was the first.  The class was on grammar, how to make words plural, and the exceptions for masculine and feminine nouns.  For those of you how don’t know other languages, many other languages have a feminine and masculine form for the same word.  For example, females use obrigada and males use obrigado to say thank you.  The only difference is that feminine words tend to end in –a or –as if plural and masculine words end in –o or –os.  This is something the English language doesn’t do, which I really like.  I know that I was definitely taking notes during this lecture.  It was pretty useful stuff to know! 

            Inside the classroom there was a bird’s nest.  One of the windows was broken, so birds were constantly flying in and out, chirping away throughout the class period.  Outside of the classroom there were a few weaverbird’s nests, enjoy!

Well, it’s pouring here and it’s been quite cold the last few days.  I know back home it’s getting colder and colder in the autumn weather, but here in Namaacha it is spring and it’s supposed to be sweltering.  I learned on my drive over to the school that spring is the hottest season here because summer and winter are rainy seasons, and it just isn’t hot in the summer because of all the rain. 

The only other fun thing that has happened in the last few days was that I got on my first chapa ride!  Yesterday morning (Wednesday), my language class learned about transportation. Normally during language days, the class learns a topic, and then applies what they learn after lunch.  Since the local transportation are chapas, each of us were given two locations within Namaacha and we needed to get on and off by ourselves.  It was pretty scary at first after hearing all the horror stories and seeing 20+ people drive by in the back of a truck.  When I say truck, here in Namaacha there aren’t any Ford F350s, there are dinky, smaller than Toyota style trucks.  Now picture people sitting on the sides, 5 or 6 people across on each side and then everyone else standing in the middle.  My first destination was fronteria, which in Portuguese means the border.  I was petrified that somehow my chapa would fly across the Swaziland border and I would be stuck in Swaziland with no way to get back into Mozambique, but thankfully that didn’t happen.  After my successful first ride, I needed to get a chapa back into town.  I was ‘lucky’ enough to get in one that quickly packed in a ton of people after me.  I was heading down the road at a fast clip with two locals with their arms wrapped around my waist for support passing by all my other volunteer friends laughing and pointing at my as I zoomed by.  They were also trying to flag down their own chapas.  It’s unbelievable some of the prices here.  To get from one end of town to the other (the chapas only drive on the main road) it’s 5 mets, which is about 16 cents for over a mile.  I might be tempted to jump on a chapa or two in my time in Namaacha with those prices! 

Before I go I’ll leave you with one random fact.  Mozambicans are supposed to have 20% of their income go to the government, but supposed to is much different than reality here. 

Dia da Paz

         My stomach is made of iron, and I am officially a charades pro at this point.  I am trying lots of new foods, even many that we were advised to stay away from.  I do feel bad though, because many other volunteers are not as lucky as I am.  After that little side note, onto some more important updates. 

            Language classes are going well and I understand my lessons more and more quickly each day.  Qiraque is turning into quite a good teacher, and I have a great group of people in my language class.  This helps a lot because 3-4 days a week we are together 8-9 hours a day.  At the end of each day I am exhausted. 

Here’s what a typical day looks like:  Class starts at 7:30 every day and ends at 5:30 with about two hours of breaks.  I wake up around 5:30, turn the stove to heat up my water for my bath, go on a run, shower, make my morning egg with some tea and bread, clean my dishes, and head to class.  After a week of being here I am finally getting used to waking up at this time.  Class from 7:30-12, a two hour break where I eat lunch, study, read, or take a nap.   Then back to class until 5:30.  After class I have some bread and butter, do chores like sweeping, washing dishes and clothes, ironing and the likes.  After that I hang out with the family, read, do homework, or hang out with some other volunteers.  In Mozambique it’s not acceptable to bathe only once a day.  My evening shower is around 7.  Dinner’s around 8 and then I play cards with my siblings, get to my room around 10, and then I blog a little or read before bed.  Bedtime is between 10:30 and 11. 

In class on Wednesday, I wrote down a memorable quote from one of the speakers: “Your work is like raindrops filling a river…You do not work alone.  There were volunteers before you, and ones that will follow.  Together you will make an impact.”  This really hit home for me.  It made me appreciate the Peace Corps even more.  I know in the future I will have days where I am frustrated beyond belief that all my hard work is for nothing, and that my students and community aren’t learning anything from me.  I’m going to put this quote on my wall to remind myself that it is bigger than me.  Step by step, volunteer-by-volunteer, we can make a difference. 

            We also learned about the national school system on Wednesday.  Here are some interesting facts from the day:

·      Primary school is 1^st-7^th grade, ages 6-12.  Secondary school is 8^th-12^th grade, ages 13-17.

·      47% of students fail secondary education. 

·      Only 2% of students can afford to buy books.  The professor is the only one with a textbook, so the notes they take are everything.

·      School isn’t five days a week; it’s normally 3 days a week. 

Yesterday was a national holiday.  O Dia da Paz, a Day of Peace.  On October 4^th, twenty years ago a treaty was signed that ended the 16-year war.  All the volunteers met at Namaacha’s memorial and watched how Mozambican’s celebrated this day.  There were a lot of speeches, songs by the women, flowers, and children dancing.  Two of the local schools had traditional dances that they performed.  The volunteers were really happy to watch and participate in this historical day.  Here are some pictures of the day. 

Here are community members at the memorial

Here is the typical dress of Mozambican women

This is my sister in her primary (elementary) school uniform.  This is Yula.

After classes, yep we were the only people with classes in the entire country, a good amount of the volunteers met at a local bar to relax for an hour, which was really nice and fun.  Moz 19 only gets to see each other once a week, and other than that we are broken up into our subjects (English, sciences, math) and our language groups.  I hung out with friends I don’t get to see as much.  Over the hour and a half I bought one coke and one beer.  The coke was in a glass bottle and cost 15 meticais, a little over 50¢.  The beer was a national beer, was twice as big as the ones in America, and it cost 35 meticais.  In American terms, two beers for $1.25.  It also costs 1 Metical per minute of internet use, apx. a little less than 4¢ a minute.  Not too shabby Mozambique, not too shabby. 

I also have made other new friends and enemies. 

This is my enemy.

Language classes

October 1^st

I am a baby.  I don’t understand 80% of the things they say.  They think I don’t know how to do anything.   Everything is different and it’s been both great and frustrating learning it all.  To them, I don’t know how to sweep, cut vegetables, eat an orange, or make a fire.  I must be crazy to them, because I peel an orange with my hands and eat the skin between the pieces.  Mozambicans put the peel off in pieces with a knife, then cut the orange in half, and then suck out the pieces with their mouths.  It looks like how I eat grapefruit with a spoon back home except the skin is chopped off. 

Speaking of fruit, we grow these babies in our backyard, so I can eat as many bananas any day I want.  I've been averaging 4-6 a day. 

I was preparing to make a fire to heat up my water for a bath, and I was very excited because I got up twenty minutes early to beat my mãe (mom) up.  I wanted to show her that I actually knew how to do something.  I had prepared the kindling, small pieces of bark shavings, and words, carefully placed small sticks, and then had larger ones ready to add on.  My mãe woke up, saw this, and told me I had everything wrong.   She destroyed all my hard work with the sweep of a broom, went inside, grabbed cardboard enough for the long side of a shoebox, and then ripped it up into a pile. On top of the cardboard she put half a plastic bag, broke up small sticks and then lit the cardboard on fire.   Whoa, I mean, yes it started quickly, but it was smoking a ton because of the plastic, and she used a lot more material than I would have.  This surprised me.  I expected them to conserve materials like that. 

A randomly placed Moz sunset with a Moz family

On another note, the last two days flew by.  Yesterday I was with my family the entire day except maybe an hour and a half to take a language proficiency test.  There’s a level for beginners, intermediates, and experts.  Today I was, happily, placed in the beginners.  There are many Cape Verde transfers.  The PC program in Cape Verde, an island off the western coast of Africa closed a few weeks ago and the Moz 19 group took on around 8 volunteers.  They’ll most likely be in the expert group because they’ve been speaking Portuguese and Creole in their communities for a year already.  Let’s just say I am happy that I am not with them or I would be wholly lost. 

I am still having a blast with my family and our communication barrier is diminishing slowly.  My mom even gave me a key to the house that I can use and showed me where she hides all the other keys for different parts of the house.  This was a great sign of trust, which I truly appreciated. 

Today, all of Moz 19 (the science teachers, the math teachers, and the English teachers together) trained at one of the main schools in Namaacha.  At training I learned that I’m not supposed to stand on the latrine, but over it.  That was a good Mozambican life lesson.  It’s much easier this way!  Also at training the group was honored by Namaacha’s mayor, a Mozambican government official, and the president of the school coming to our training session and speaking to us. 

From the government official, we learned that Namaacha will celebrate what they call Peace Day on October 4^th.  Mozambique will be celebrating 20 years of peace from the civil war that ravaged the country.  I am very excited to see how Mozambique celebrates this day, so I hope that we will get a break from training to participate, or at least see the festivities.  I always love learning about how different cultures treat different occasions like independence days, deaths, birthdays, and weddings to name a few examples. 

Moz 19 broke up into our language groups, and when we were walking to our destination we saw some Australians speaking in English to some of the locals with minimal success.  I had seen one of the Australians earlier in the morning and saved him from losing a good amount of money.  The conversion for money here is 28 to 1, meticais to dollars and the Australian was asking how much he could get for $100.  The local told him 1500 meticais, so I told the Aussie what the conversion was and he was extremely happy to have met me. 

On our way to our first language lesson, my group passed by the Australians in the afternoon.  I asked them what they were doing here.  They said they were making a documentary on landmines, which I’m not going to lie freaked out many of the people in our group, including me.  Our LCF, language and cross-culture facilitator, was trying telling us that the film was about what it was like during the war, and not how it is now, but we didn’t know enough Portuguese to understand him.  (I am writing this a day after this conversation, and my Portuguese was better today than yesterday.) 

Today I had my first language class, and I have a lot to learn.  We aren’t allowed to speak any English.  I really like my language teacher, Qiraque (add a “k” in front of Iraq to pronounce his name) though.  He is patient, funny, and a good teacher.  There are four other volunteers with me in the group, and each class session is held in one of our houses.  In two weeks the classes will be held in my house. 

After my language lesson I stepped around the fence (Jamie, the gal’s house we had language training at is my next door neighbor, so I don’t have to walk very far for lessons.) and went home to an empty house.  It was actually really nice to have thirty minutes to myself before my mom, and siblings came home. 

I learned at dinner tonight that Miguel, my host brother has pretty good English.  This helps a lot when I can’t find the right word to use in Portuguese, and I am learning Portuguese faster because I am able to communicate things faster when he helps me with a word.   Even though he isn’t helping me as much in the long run, I only seek his English help rarely, so I don’t think it is too terrible. 

Along with my English getting better, I am getting better around the house.   Today I ‘learned’ how to cook spaghetti.  PC trains the host families to teach their volunteers how to do absolutely everything; cook, clean clothes, how to sweep your room, how to bucket bathe, and how to take out the trash reagardless of if you know how to do it already or not.  I tried telling my host mother numerous times that I could cook spaghetti—although she did add tomatoes, onions, basil leaves, and tuna to the spaghetti—but she wouldn’t listen.  Miguel and Yula, my youngest host sister, were trying to have my mom stop teaching also, but my mom was adamant that she needed to show me because that’s what they said in training.  It’s pretty interesting seeing how similar some things are in the US and how things I wouldn’t have even thought about are different.  Take the oranges for example.

One thing that is extremely different is cleaning clothes.  Today I learned how to wash my dirty clothes.  It consists of powdered detergent in one water bucket, and another bucket with clean water.  The clothes are drenched and scrubbed in the bucket with the detergent and then put into the bucket without soap.  The detergent water is dumped, and then refilled with clean water.  We then scrub our clothes a second time and put them in the other bucket of water to ensure that there isn’t any soap on our clothes.  Then you hang them.  The whole process took about 20 minutes for 3 or 4 outfits.  Then they dry and ironing takes another 20 minutes. 

Hey, that's me! 

The PC told us not to have our underwear and bras hanging on the line, so I have them drying on top of my mosquito net in my room.  My mom saw it and called my brother and sisters over to see.  They were laughing a lot and they definitely think I am crazy.  Tomorrow my mom said she would teach me too cook matapa.  I am extremely excited for this.  I heard it takes a little while, but it’s an experience, and it’s delicious!

I am going running again tomorrow morning so I need to wake up at 5:10.  For all of you that know my sleep schedule you will be amazed that I have woken up earlier than 5:30 the last three days to go running. 

Well that’s all for now.  Boa noite, good night.  

Welcome to Namaacha

September 29th...Yes I know this is over a month old, but I'm in a third world country, so I finally figured out access to the internet.  My apologies, but I'll be updating my blog more now, I promise!

      This morning my roommate Gaby, an Ecuadorian who is fantastic, and I woke up to start the day.  The weather is surprising here in Mozambique; one minute it is windy and feels like a New England fall* (it might just be wishful thinking over there) and the next the group is sitting sweating in 90-degree weather.  For the most part it tends to stay hot though.  Moz 19 ate a delicious breakfast.  I made sure to stock up on plenty of cheese at the hotel because we left for Namaacha today, where we were going to meet our host families.  My host family will be my mother, Lurdes (44), my father, Vernancio, and a 27-year-old brother, Eugànio.

      As the morning commenced the group had an orientation meeting to prepare for our host families, what to say, what to do, what not to do, the whole shebang.  I learned quickly that we were going to be stuffed to the bone with food, meals were going to be 60-80% carbs consisting of white rice and potatoes (sorry mom!), that children were going to pick through our trash, and that our mother would try to help us bucket bathe by ripping the capulana off our bodies to teach us if we didn't insist that we knew how to bucket bathe.  We were actually trained and retrained on how to say that we were full.  Chega in Portuguese means I'm full!  Tenho uma estomaginha, I have a small stomach.

      A capulana is similar to a sarong or small bed sheet.  They are all patterned and colored differently.  Capulanas seem to have more uses than duct tape**.  They wrap around a woman's hair, act as a towel, are used as a skirt, dress, or blanket.  They are a yoga mat and are used to carry a baby on your back, and the list goes on.  It's also extremely cheap to buy one in the market for around 100 meticais, (the local currency) which is less than $4.  The exchange rate is 28 meticais to 1 US dollar.  Then we can pay a tailor to make a fitted dress for us for another 150 meticais.  An entire beautiful fitted dress for less than $10 in any style I want.  Yes I will, thank you very much!  I'm also telling all the ladies this so that they will want to come to visit me and get a capulana dress.
     
      So now that we knew what to expect a little bit we headed off from Maputo to Namaacha.  15 people packed into a chapa for our first real cultural experience.  Imagine a mini bus about a foot longer than a caravan that has plywood for seats, a worn down pad over the plywood and then a leather cover.  There are five rows of seats and the back two rows fits a very cramped 4 across.  I was the first one in the van, so I was pushed into the back corner.  Even though my butt hurt from sitting on the plywood and my knees were jammed into the bar of the seat in front of me, I actually enjoyed myself.  I saw more of the city in Maputo, and then the countryside.  The soil is unbelievably red here, and there is a good variety of trees that I have no idea what they are.  It is also much greener than I was expecting.  Goats and cows constantly roam around the fields and hills along the highway to Namaacha.  I've also seen beautiful herons the last two days; one in Maputo and one in Namaacha.

Now here's the fun part.  We pulled into a school in Namaacha and as we all got off the bus we heard singing in the distance.  We walked into what I think is an auditorium (big open flat room with stadium seating on one side) to see around 70 women and children singing to us.  It was a beautiful, upbeat song that I really enjoyed.  It was definitely a warm welcoming!  We then found out that these women were all our host mothers.  They pulled out their slips of papers with our name on it.  I quickly found my mother, whom I noted was in her Sunday best (a beautiful outfit) and we both greeted each other heartily in very chopped Portuguese.  My mom held my hand for the first probably 7 minutes of us being together.  Hand holding is extremely common between mothers and children, married women and married women, and even sometimes married men with other men, but never between sexes unless it is a mother with her young son.  Public intimacy is extremely frowned upon, and even being in public with another guy is seen as these two are dating and are very intimate.

      As we were walking it was pretty evident that she is a popular and well-liked lady by the other mothers.  They were all stopping to talk with her and meet me, and she was always smiling and laughing.   I felt like a stupid bobble head smiling my butt off because I had no idea what they were saying.   The only things I knew how to say were "Boa tarde!  Como esta? Estou boa.  Como se chama?  Eu chamo-me Amanda.  Nao entendo, desculpa!"  In english this is "Good afternoon.  How are you?  I am good.  What is your name?  My name is Amanda.  I don't understand, sorry!"
     

Above is a video of all the host mothers greeting us as we arrived at the school

      As we arrived at the house, I met a nine-year-old girl named Yuma, a thirteen-year-old girl named Zimha, and a gal in her twenties called Lusvitara (I think!).  I also have a dog called Sheike!  (Shrek-y without the 'r')  In Mozambique dogs aren't as well loved as in the states.  They aren't ever allowed inside, they don't go with families on runs or walks, they are only fed the trash scraps from meals, and it is seen as extremely dirty to have them lick you.  This makes me sad, but I will most likely give Skeike more love in three months than he has seen his entire life. He is already following me around everywhere outside because I am the only one that pets him on a regular basis and scratches his stomach.  Don't worry, I checked if it was okay for me to do that!  
     
      After a few minutes at the house I found out all the girls are my sisters.  She's also quite helpful and good at figuring out my broken Portuguese, Spanish, and English attempts at communication.  The 27-year-old son and the father are both gone working for the family.  I will meet the father on Sunday, tomorrow.  
     
      The house is better than I was expecting.  I have electricity, we have sugar cane and vegetables out back with probably half a dozen chickens and ducks.  The fridge is very stocked with most things that would be in the fridges we have in the US.  They have a set of china, a big stereo, and a tv.  The latrine is also an adventure to use.  In the middle is a big hole.  You plant your feet on either side of the hole, squat down and do your thing.  As the girls at training said, we would soon get thighs of thunder from squatting.
     

The kitchen

The latrine

      I also had my first bucket bath, which I really enjoyed.  You have a bucket with boiled water, another with cold water, an empty bucket to mix the two, and then a cup to scoop the water and pour it on your body.  It uses infinitely less water than showers and American baths.  It also feels great.  I was lucky enough to not have the little ones spying on me through the window or my mother trying to help me bathe.
     
      I taught the four ladies how to play Dutch Blitz, a card game I learned in America.  At first, this was a catastrophe.  Yuma was constantly looking through her pile (that's not allowed) and pulling out the cards she wanted, Zimha was picking up her blitz pile (a pile that is supposed to stay on the table, and not in your hand), and Lusvitara didn't understand the concept of what her hand was supposed to do.  My mother was helping Yuma a little.  After the round finally finished, the scoring was an even bigger mess, so I just collected and sorted the cards and began to shuffle my hand.  They were fascinated with my shuffling, so I spent the next 10 minutes teaching them how to shuffle.  Cards were flying everywhere.  Then they wanted to play again, and all of a sudden things were clicking in their minds, they were getting the rules and it looked like a real game.  Yay, my first real accomplishment with communication!   I also showed them pictures of my family and friends, which they really enjoyed seeing.  We then watched a little James Bond in Portuguese before I helped my mom prepare for dinner.   She is unbelievable to watch cutting vegetables.

My mom washing clothes at 5:30 AM

      The food is delicious and definitely different.  Today I ate my first chicken foot in a homemade soup, and it wasn't that bad.  Lunch was soup, oranges, rice, salad, and fish.  Dinner was exactly the same except we cooked the chicken from lunch and ate it for dinner along with the French fries I helped cut.  During dinner Miguel, my 17-year-old brother arrived and was pretty great.  He was helping all the women and his sisters out, asking them about their day, and he has taken a few years of English in school, so he was a pretty helpful and addition to the dinner table to me.   He asked if I could teach him how to play cards, and all the women were excited to play again, so I am looking forward to that tomorrow.  I do feel bad though.  I told my mother than I enjoy running, and so now Miguel has to wake up at 5:30 to show me where I can run.  First of all, I feel terrible to make him do that, but my mother is insisting, and I also do not want to wake up at 5:30.  Okay, it's off to bed for me.
     

My dog***

      I am quite tired and I need to run, bathe, help make breakfast, do a few chores, eat breakfast, and get into my Sunday clothes to go to church with the family at 7:30.  When they asked me if I was religious, I told them minimally, because I know that it's a big part of their lives, and I am very curious to see a service.   This will be a one-time experience and I will tell them I need to study my Portuguese on Sunday mornings because every Sunday afternoon Moz 19 had Portuguese proficiency tests.
     
      Boa noite!
*If anyone in New Hampshire, or anywhere else for that matter, that has beautiful trees turning, I would love to get an email with some pictures!   I miss autumn!   Especially in this heat.

**Duct tape is illegal to carry on to airplanes in the United States.  Many of the guys in our group had theirs confiscated.  Luckily mine was not seen.

 ***My dog is found out within the last two weeks (today is Nov. 9) is a big bully.  He won't even let me pet other dogs without attacking them.  According to him my hands are for him and him only, so he has given a few of the great neighborhood dogs some new scars to show off.  I've started to like him a little less.



After note: Good fortune must be upon me.  I went outside to use the bathroom again, and this time I was slightly nervous about how it would end up.  It was my first time going poop and I wasn't sure how my stomach would settle with the local food.  I most likely will jinx it, but I have a stomach of iron.  I also looked up and was staring at a beautiful full moon, a brand new set of constellations to learn, and then a shooting star streaked across the sky.  I am so happy right now, and I am excited for the next few months with my family.