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.