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.