I'm dreaming of a hot Christmas

As expected, Christmas in the Peace Corps is somewhat... abnormal. Instead of celebrating with family, you come together with the closest thing you have -- your PC friends. So Szasha and I packed our bags and left Tete for the city of Chimoio. There, we met up with sixteen (yes, count 'em, sixteen!) other volunteers and festejared together.

We did not have a white Christmas. We did not open presents or get goodies in stockings. We did not go sledding or ice skating. We could not put up on Christmas lights or tinsel. We did not get to hug our families.

All these things we did not do. However, here are all the great things that we DID do:

1. We cooked nonstop!

There was so much cooking! Our days basically consisted of taking turns between cooking, eating, and lazing about. I personally did a lot of lazing about. Luckily for me, a lot of the people in our region are really good at cooking, so they directed us and we made so many tasty meals together! Everybody chipped in and we were able to eat like kings for three days straight on the amount of money we would otherwise have blown on one meal at a nice restaurant. It was a nice change from my usual meal of pasta with some kind of sauce.

Sarah and Lisa work hard mashing potatoes

Also, we're a little bit proud of all the things we cooked (see below.) We heard rumors that gatherings of volunteers in other regions bought frozen chickens. Frozen chickens! We legit slaughtered our own. Boo yah!

(1.) The chickens that we are about to slaughter. (2.) The slaughtering of the chickens. (3.) The chickens are grilled to perfection.

2. We ate nonstop!

 

Round One: Brunch

Our brunches consisted of:

• French Toast
• Latkes with mango and sour cream
• Cornflakes
• Peanut Butter Sandwiches

Round Two: Dinner

Our dinners consisted of:

• Vegetable Curry
• Roast Chicken, Fried Chicken, Broiled Chicken
• Sweet Potatoes and Mashed Potatoes
• Green Beans
• Various tossed Salads
• Chili with toasted garlic bread

... and everything eaten with homemade Piri-Piri sauce, of course!

Round Three: Dessert

Our desserts consisted of:

• Lemon Bars
• Mango Crumble
• Fruit salad
• Sugar Cookies
• Gingerbread Cookies
• Mulled Wine
• Apple Cider
• Peanut M&M's

I have only one word to say:

YUM.

3. We decorated like crazy!

Szasha, Anna and I all love to decorate. We had limited resources (I.e. only plain white paper and some markers) but we made it work!

Anna made these super cute stockings for each of us before we arrived. Love it!

 Szasha, Alexandra and I decorated the Christmas Tree. Well, Christmas Shrub, then. Either way, it was our pride and joy.

(1.) Alexandra adds snowflakes and candy canes. (2.) I add paper chains. (3.) Szasha adds the finishing touch -- the star.

 4. We celebrated a birthday!

My friend and Alexandra was born on Christmas Eve! So we made her birthday lemon bars in a makeshift Dutch oven and sang to her. We also gave her a thermos to keep water warm in her electricity-less house in the middle of the bush.

Make a wish, Alexandra!

5. We relaxed with our friends

 Seeing friends was by far the best part of our little Christmas trip. We are also really lucky that we had such a big group and everyone was able to come. It was a tight squeeze to fit fifteen people in a small, two-bedroom house, but fit we did. (I may have slept in a doorway once.) It didn't feel overcrowded, though, because we were all so happy to be there and everyone got along great.
We spent a lot of time just sitting around, cooking, watching movies, and talking about how our first couple of weeks at our sites has been. It was so nice to be able to unwind and relax after the hectic mess that is the first few weeks at our new homes. 

Sarah, Lisa and Kristen hang out in front of Anna's house, where we spent many hours fofoca-ing (gossiping).

The card game "Carrots." Have you played Spoons? Then you know how to play Carrots.

Chatting around the charcoal stove. Much chatting occured.

Being with friends was the best part of our journey. This is me with my neighbor Szasha and birthday girl Alexandra.

5. We missed our families.

Let's face it: being away for Christmas really sucks. But luckily, the other volunteers around me made it suck much less than it could have. OK, maybe listening to "I'll be home for Christmas" made us sad, but we were all communally sad. And thus, not really that sad at all. Because, after all, how can you be down for long with friends like these?

Merry Christmas from Mozambique!

I am one of the lucky ones.

Most volunteers aren't as lucky as me. I got my first choice of country placement, a country that speaks a language I already knew coming in. I had a pretty drastic head start in Portuguese, having lived in Brazil for 5 years and studied 3 semesters of Portuguese in college. There is no doubt in my mind that that fact saved me a lot of frustration and homesickness during the first few months of service.

That being said, Mozambican Portuguese has some pretty striking differences to Brazilian Portuguese. The best way I can describe it, without going Full-On-Linguistics-Dork, is that Mozambicans have the speech rhythm of Brazilians but the pronunciation of someone from Portugal -- with that extra dash of Bantu-influenced je-ne-sais-quoi. When I first got here, I never thought I'd never lose my precious Brazilian accent -- after all, I'd been hearing Brazilian Portuguese since I was a kid. The jury is still out on whether or not the Critical Period exists, but if it does, I'm pretty sure we can all agree that age 4 falls within that particular linguistic window.

"I don't think I'll ever lose my Brazilian accent," I told my friends during training, "I've been hearing it for so long. I can't unlearn it."

How wrong I was! Only three months later, I have come to a striking realization:

My Portuguese has become positively Mozambican.

Recently, as I was taking a walk through my community, I happened to meet one of the nuns that lives near the school. I talked with her for a few minutes, and got the distinct impression that, somehow, I already knew her. Something about the way she spoke struck me as familiar, even though this was our first encounter.

"I'm originally from Brazil." she said. "I come from Curitiba. But I have lived here for many years now."

I was so surprised! Excited, I told her that I had also lived in Brazil, and that I studied Brazilian Portuguese for many years.

"Really?" she said. "You don't sound Brazilian at all. You sound Mozambican."

Um... what?

I didn't really know what to think at first. I was flattered that she didn't say "You sound American," but I had felt so oddly proud of my Brazilian accent, and it was strange to hear that in a matter of weeks it had just... vanished.

But had it really vanished? That night, I turned on a Brazilian movie and closed my eyes and listened to it closely, taking in the Brazilian-ness of it. I wasn't really listening to what was being said, just letting the sounds bounce around inside my ears. After only a couple of minutes, I turned to a random page in my book and tried read aloud -- in Brazilian Portuguese -- and found it surprisingly easy.

So I've come to the conclusion that my Brazilian Portuguese has not vanished. It's still there, but I've made a conscious decision to tuck it away in a drawer. Yeah, it's kind of fun to sound like the people on the telenovelas, and it makes an interesting topic for conversation, but a huge part of integrating in my community here is the language, and it's going to make me that much more a part of my community if I sound like my Mozambican neighbors and not like a Brazilian expat. I am lucky to have a good ear for sound, and have the good fortune of having taken more than one phonetics class in college, so why not master Mozambican Portuguese as well as Brazilian Portuguese?

Now if only I could get a handle on Nyungwe... but that's a challenge for another day.

"Just wanted to say hi!"

There is a particular aspect of Mozambican culture I have yet to figure out, and it's the Typical Mozambican Phone Call. This is how it goes:

*Phone rings.*
Me: Olá? / Hello?
Mozambican: Professora Helena! Como esta? / Professor Helen! How are you?
Me: Estou bem. Como-- / I am fine, and how are --
Mozambican: Eu também estou bem. Só queria cumprimentar! / I am also fine! Just wanted to say hello.
Me: Ok, obrigada... / OK, thanks....
Mozambican: De nada, de nada. OK... até logo, ne? / You're welcome, you're welcome. Ok, well... later!
Me: Uh ... tchau? /  Uh ... bye?
*Mozambican hangs up.*

I have gotten this exact phone call from a wide variety of people. My host mom, my school director, my roommate, a friend of a friend who I met in the marketplace... the list goes on. I would say I get these two to three times a week. The first ones I received were from my host dad in South Africa, who I had not yet met at the time. He would call me every two to three days for no apparent reason. I thought it was really weird. I asked a Mozambican about it and they said "Oh, well it's just, you know, to make sure you are doing well."

Clearly.

I suppose that makes sense, but to me it seems as if this takes out all meaningful conversation and leaves only a formulaic question-and-answer script -- so what's the point? When I figure it out, I'll let you know. As for now, I'm just glad it's short and I don't have to make a lot of Polite Telephone Conversation. Those tend to be filled with Awkward Silences.


In other news, I went hiking with my dog yesterday. We wandered around for a bit down by the river, until we ran into The Bush of Africa. Here it is.

This is the Bush. Isn't it so... bush-like?

I didn't have a machete on me (To do: get machete), and didn't particularly relish the thought of trampling through thick underbrush with my next-to-nill knowledge of Mozambican Venomous and Dangerous Bush Animals. (Are there crocodiles in the Mavudzi River? How about black mambas? These are legitimate concerns.) So I climbed a tree and took a nap instead.

Poppy guarded the tree-trunk as I lazed about in the foliage.

 It was a good day.

An Average Day

05:30 - Wake up to the sound of the neighborhood children playing loudly outside my window. Decide to ignore them and go back to sleep until a more reasonable hour.
06:30 - Wake up for real, unable to sleep any more. Read. (a.k.a. postpone leaving the safety of my house.)
07:30 - Make the decision to leave house due to increasingly urgent need to urinate. As soon as I open the door, am greeted by flock of neighborhood children. "Professora Helena, can we watch a movie? Can we make bracelets like you showed us?" Not now, I tell them. Later.
08:00 - Eat delicious breakfast of corn flakes whilst being stared down by aforementioned flock of children. Children remain fascinated, unfazed by the fact that I am completely ignoring them and reading my book.  "How about now, Professora Helena?" Not now. Later.
10:00 - Shoo children out of my house under pretext of "I need to clean the house." I don't actually need to clean, but I do anyway because it means the kids leave me alone, frightened that I'll order them to clean my house for me. Sweep and mop floors inside and out. Wash and dry dishes. Organize clothing in rainbow order. Straighten out the bristles on my toothbrush.
11:30 - Make lunch. Pretend not to notice the faces of the children peering into my house, watching me cook. Pretend as if they are not there and eventually, they disappear.
12:30 - Take advantage of general community lull of lunch hour and retreat into my sanctuary to take a nap.
14:00 - Wake up from nap, energized. Open door. "Professora Helena we thought you'd never wake up! Show us how to do that cat's cradle thing. Can we listen to music? Can we come inside now?" Fine.
14:30 - Watch Disney movie with the flock. My movies are all in English. "Professora Helena, what's going on? Why is her hair so long? Are they in love? Professora Helena, who is that blue man that keeps changing shape?" (The Genie. Yeah. Try explaining Robin Williams to Mozambican children. The closest I got was "He's an espirito.")
16:00 - Shoo children out and prepare bathwater to take a bath. Relish the feeling of cold water on my skin and the sound of silence. Still feel watched, since my dog follows me everywhere -- including the bath house.
17:00 - Put bamboo mat ("esteira") out on front porch. Listen to music and write in journal as the sun goes down. Feel happy due to the beauty of the sunset. Tell children they are welcome to sit with me as long as they are silent. They manage about 10 minutes before some argument or another breaks out and I tell them to go home.
18:00 - Make a mad dash for the latrine before the sun is completely gone and the cockroaches begin their nightly haunt.
18:30 - Start cooking dinner. Feel self-conscious because cooking is not my forté and it is accompanied by a running commentary by the children. "Professora Helena, you sure do eat a lot of noodles. Professora Helena, why don't you eat xima every day like us? Professora Helena, you open cans so weird. Professora Helena, maybe you should just come over and eat dinner at our house..."
19:00 - Eat dinner, all the while being observed. Feel more than a little sympathy for zoo animals.
20:00 - Leave house and converse with neighbors, making effort to be more social. "Professora Helena, it's so very strange that you're not married yet. Is it true you don't have any children? Professora Helena, it's so funny that you think it's hot here. This is nothing."
21:00 - Tell neighbors and children that I am retiring to bed. Crawl into the safety of my mosquito net and read for several hours. This is probably my favorite part of the day.
23:00 - Fall asleep, exhausted.

How To Stay Cool During the Hot Season

• Procure a fan. It is now your best friend. Take good care of it, and it will take good care of you.
• Find a shady place to sit. If you can manage to do so gracefully, lying spread-eagle on the concrete floor is surprisingly comfortable. You may choose to sleep like this on nights over 90 degrees. If you do so, close the blinds so that you manage to keep some shred of respect in your community.
• Drink lots of cold water. The amount you drink should be equal or more to the gallons per minute of sweat that is pouring out of your body.
• Have a bowl of water nearby to sprinkle on yourself periodically as you sit in a heat-indued stupor. As it evaporates, close your eyes and imagine you are in Scandinavia. This is possibly the closest you get to feeling cold, so enjoy it.
• Send text messages of condolence to your neighbors and others in similarly hot places to remind yourself you're not alone. If it makes you feel better, spread malicious rumors about those lucky volunteers who got sent to the cooler climates. (Serves them right. Hope they get Schisto or malaria.)
• Whenever you are in a city, find a place with air conditioning, order an iced coffee, and vegetate for several hours under the AC unit. Meditate on what it feels like and memorize the sensation, so that when you are at your house, slowly melting away, you can transport yourself back to your Happy Place.
• Buy a big bucket, fill with water and ice. Invite your friend and his/her bucket over and sit on the porch together, inside your buckets, chatting the hottest part of the day away. Laugh because the locals think you're positively insane at this point. Drastic times and all that.
• When all else fails, remind yourself why you are here in the first place. And remind yourself that, while you're only going to be here for 2 years and you have the luxury of a fan and a minifridge, your neighbors live here year-round and do not have these things. Tell yourself to stop being such a wimp and suck it up.

#1 Reason I Use My Insecticide-Treated Bug Net

What IS this!??

They give us a bug net to prevent malaria, but I'm a little more concerned about this guy that i found wandering around my bedroom. WHAT IS THIS?? Ten points to whoever can identify the species. Are those venom-filled fangs at the front? I think so!

Photos of My New Abode

This is my house! As seen from the front. Not too shabby!

I live in a professor complex adjacent to the school, so it's three housing units in one of these long buildings. I live in the middle, with families live on either side of me, and I share my housing unit with a Mozambican teacher.

Behold the Latrines. Each one corresponds to a house. Mine is the second from the right. There's an identical row of these that serve as bath houses, the only difference being that the bathhouses don't have a hole in the ground for, well, you know. They have a drain instead.

This is the inside of my house. I haven't decorated yet -- that's still coming.

This is my "kitchen". Mini-fridge and hot plate? It's just like college!

My bedroom. Notice the alarmingly large stack of books and somewhat useless Peace Corps manuals. I need a bookshelf if I ever want to open that trunk that all that crap is sitting on.

Decor in my room. On the left: To remind me of my PCV friends. I knew pilfering the Thanksgiving decorations would come in handy. On the right: To remind me of home. Next I want to draw a giant map of Mozambique and put pins where all my friends are.

Saving the best for last, this is the view from my front porch. Pretty sweet, huh? The mountains are gorgeous at sunset.

And there you have it! This is where I'm going to be living for 2 years. Woah.

Mavudzi: The First Days

Well, it's Day 3 here in Tete and SO much has happened! Since I last posted, I've been getting lots of things done off of my Peace Corps Successful Integration Checklist.

Yesterday, my director stopped by my house at 7:30 a.m. and was flabberghasted that I hadn't showered and eaten yet. 7:30 is practically afternoon by Mozambican standards. After getting ready, I went with him to the school and met a bunch of teachers -- they all seem like they are going to be really fun to work with. The plan was going to be for me just to meet people, but since Redi (the other English teacher) was called away for a family emergency, I was asked to help grade English exams. Kind of daunting when your first act as a teacher at school is to decide who passes 10th grade English and who doesn't! But they taught me the grading scale and it was pretty straightforward so I think I did O.K. Meet teachers: Check.

Amusingly enough, I managed to lock myself out of my house, and the only other person that has a key to our house is Redi, who was, of course, out of town. I had my key with me but it wouldn't unlock the door for some reason. I told the neighborhood crianças that I'd have a prize for whoever managed to figure out how to open the door -- and spent the next hour watching amusedly as about a dozen children tried their luck (to no avail). It was like the Sword in the Stone, except no one succeeded. Interact with crianças: Check. Eventually, though, I got tired of sitting on my front porch and I went to my director for help -- and he took me to go see the carpenter! Meet carpenter: Check. Next step: Commission him to make me a bookshelf.


While waiting for the carpenter to get dressed and get his tools together, my director treated me to my favorite brand of Mozambican beer (Manica) at the only place to get refreshments in town and we had a nice conversation. He is really friendly and open-minded. He was quite fond of the volunteer I am replacing but I think we are going to get along well. In the time that we conversed, the carpenter managed to break into my house and all was well again.

Today, Szasha and I decided to go into the city as we were both sorely lacking in essential supplies (like buckets and food). I really like Tete City -- it's a good size, pretty clean and there isn't trash all over the place like some other cities (cough cough CHIMOIO!). We had a really productive morning in which we explored Tete and found:
- A supermarket with everything we will ever need, including chocolate.
- A really nice vendedora (market vendor) named Cristina in the local mercado. She was the only one not to inflate the prices on us ridiculously just because we're "muzungus" (whites). We had a nice conversation with her about who we are and what we are doing here and she was so pleased to meet us that she gave us an extra tomato and two onions. Score!
- An airconditioned coffeeshop and bakery where we can buy hamburgers, grilled cheese sandwiches, and milkshakes. That seals the deal: I like Tete. The café is owned by a nice Lebanese man who provided us with many useful directions.
-The bank and the cell phone store, where we ran into a British ex-pat named Tim who is here with a construction/engineering company. We forgot to get his phone number so it is our mission at some point next time in Tete to find Tim again. The Search for Tim commences. He was very nice, we could use some new friends in the city, and it doesn't hurt that he mentioned that his apartment has air conditioning...

The only thing I didn't manage to find is a good xixi bucket. What is a xixi bucket, you ask? 'Tis a bucket for those times in the middle of the night when nature calls and you don't want to make the trek to the latrine. A good xixi bucket will fit nicely in a corner, not be super unsightly, and have a lid to contain odor. You keep it in your bedroom, fill it with a little water and a little bleach, and walla! Aiming is more easier for men, I think. I actually dont mind walking to the latrine, but mine seems to grow a cockroach infestation as soon as the sun goes down, so a good xixi bucket is definitely on my Lookout List. Right now, I'm using a "Xixi Emtpy-Margarine-Plastic-Container" which is... somewhat problematic, shall we say?

After our day out in Tete, Szasha and I were totally wiped out. So much excitement! So we made our way home, and a Very Amusing Event occurred on the chapa ride home! As we were waiting for the chapa to fill up, some kid stole this guy's plastic bag with sodas that he had just bought. He was really mad about it, but no one could find the kid and so the man had no choice but to let it go. But lo and behold! Just as we pulled out of the chapa stop, one of the other passengers shouted "There he is! That's the kid! Look, the one who took your plastic bag!" so our cobrador stopped the chapa and he and the passenger ran after the kid. They ripped the doughballs that the kid was selling from his hands and said "You give back that man's sodas or we are taking these doughballs as payment." The kid was really stubborn and didn't want to return the sodas, but everyone else in the chapa (about 18 people) started shouting "GIVE THAT MAN HIS STUFF BACK!" So eventually the kid ran and got the plastic bag with sodas and returned it. The guy whose sodas they were gave the kid a disciplinary slap upside the head and returned all but one of the kids bags of doughballs. He kept one bag and  said, "I'm taking these as payment for your misbehavior. Next time, don't steal." And he gave the doughballs away to other passengers in the chapa. The kid was super pissed, but everyone in the chapa (Szasha and I included) thought it was hilarious and some of them shouted "Thanks for the snack!" out the window as we pulled away. Justice served!

It was a thoroughly exhausting day, but also immensely enjoyable.

That's about all I have as far as updates are concerned, but before I finish I wanted to show off the best thing so far about Mavudzi!

This is Poppy. I inherited her from the volunteer before me.

Everyone in town loves Poppy. She follows me everywhere, she chases chickens and goats and ducks out of my house when they wander in (so they don't poop all over the floor), and she growls when strangers walk too close to the front door at night. Multipurpose AND super cute. What a combo! The only problem? She is a super picky eater. She won't eat dog food, and she'll only eat certain types of people food. Today, she stared me down until I gave her some of my spicy feijão, but then when she took one lick she decided she didn't like it and left the rest sitting there. My delicious spicy beans! The nerve! She makes up for it by following me all around town, though. I'm already known as "the muzungu with the dog." I'm OK with that. It's a start. Hopefully  once the school year starts, they'll know me as Professora Helena instead. Hopefully.

Muli bwanji! (Hello! From Tete!)

I am writing to you from my new home in Tete. It's a little bit surreal. I don't really know where to even start so I think a chronological sequence might be best for comprehension's sake. I'm a little all over the place at the moment.

Saturday morning, we woke up ridiculously early for our 5 a.m. departure -- which was hard since we stayed up super late the night before, it being out last night together and all. Peace Corps rented a chapa to take me and Sasha to our sites and we were the first to leave.

Here we are with all our bags. Lisa woke up super early to say goodbye to us, which was sweet of her.

And the we were off! It's about a six hour drive from Chimoio to Tete city, and I slept much of that way. We are lucky because Tete is the energy capital of Mozambique and there's a lot of business in this part of the country -- so the vast majority of our journey was on the nicest road in Mozambique.

My first reaction to Tete was the following: "I'm sorry, but did I forget to leave Texas?" It's hot, it's relatively dry, and it looks EXACTLY like Texas Hill Country. I kid you not. There were portions of road where the only distinguishing factor between Texas and Tete was the fact that Texas has no Boab trees. I have included the following photo as evidence.

Texas or Tete? Hard to tell, innit?

Now on to the important stuff. I arrived in Mavudzi-Ponte and my stuff was unloaded. The chapa driver promptly left to drop off Szasha and, well... I was at site. Alone. Weird feeling.

I live in a professors complex next door to the school, so my commute to work is about 30 yards. There are several long concrete buildings, each divided into a few "houses", and each house has two bedrooms and a living area. I am living with a really nice Mozambican teacher named Redi who seems really awesome. She teaches English too, so we'll be working together a lot.

My bedroom is small but has potential for quaintness. The first thing I did was kill about 30 spiders big-as-yo-face. The whole house is empty right now, so I will have to get to work on decorating. The school director said that we're getting a table soon, so that will be nice. I need somewhere to work.

I dont have running water but the well is really close to the complex and so far, all the kids are so excited that I'm here that theyve been taking turns to go fetch water for me. They have also offered to wash my dishes, clean the floor, etc. Sweet. Funny factoid: One of the girls that came over today was wearing this T-Shirt and (I kid you not) it says: "Wenn Mama und Papa "NEIN" sagen, frage ich Oma und Opa!" which is German for "When mom and dad say no, I ask Grandma and Grandpa!"

Yesterday was a thoroughly exhausting day. One of my biggest fears was being placed at a site alone (without another volunteer) and as much as I'm looking forward to integrating and teaching, I've also been dreading it. It didn't help that yesterday was sweltering and humid, so last night I was lying awake in a pool of my own sweat, unable to sleep and left with nothing but my increasingly irrationally negative thoughts ("Why the heck am I here!?"). I eventually gave up on lying in bed, doused myself with cold water from my minifridge (best purchase so far!) and dozed off sitting up directly in front of my fan while watching the Legend of Korra.

This morning, things are already looking brighter. I ate corn flakes for breakfast, which was possibly the most exciting thing to happen to me this week, and chugged cold water from my new fridge. It was a great morning routine.

Peace Corps tells us that we need to make an effort to go out and meet people, and they make a HUGE point of "Don't hide out in your house." which is exactly what I am so very tempted to do. We took the Myers-Briggs personality type indicator during training and I scored very strongly as a introvert, so going around and meeting people is hard for me as well as incredibly stressful and tiring. I made a deal with myself that I would only hide out in my house until 8 a.m., at which point I took the esteira (bamboo mat) and put it out on my front porch and started to write in my journal. It's a step. And lo and behold! Some crianças (kids) almost immediately came over and sat with me. Then they started accumulating and soon there were a crowd of people! I've already forgotten all of their names, but its a start. I could tell they were talking about me in local dialect, but I didn't really mind all that much. I was just happy I met some people. That's one goal accomplished.

After about an hour and a half, I had nothing left to write and the crianças got distracted so I came back inside am contiuing to hide out. Just a little. Then I'll make lunch, and maybe venture outside again.

I am going to try and take some pictures at some point this week so you guys can see where I live. In the mean time, I really appreciate e-mails and phone calls. Hint, hint. I realize calling is expensive, but even e-mails are awesome. You have no idea how exciting it is to see an e-mail from a friendly face in your inbox are when you are sitting there, wondering just what you got yourself into for two years.

Swearing In

Hear ye, hear ye, no longer am I a twerpy little Trainee, I am officially a Peace Corps Volunteer! 100% Certified American Grade-A Volunteer. Yup, we had our Swearing-In ceremony in Maputo on Tuesday to make it all official and, well, now it's official!

Leaving Namaacha for what was probably the last time in quite a while was a surreal feeling, but we were all so excited to get to Maputo for swearing in that we were (mostly) all smiles. Namaacha, being Namaacha, bid us farewell with the rain and matope (mud) that we have come to know and not love. Additionally, we got stuck in some heavy traffic en route to Maputo and it was raining there as well, which meant that not only were we late for our own swearing-in ceremony but we had to revert to Rain Plan and quickly re-arrange everything to be able to have it in the Ambassador's house instead of outside on the beautiful grounds.

So official!

No matter, we were sworn in just the same. First Carl, the director of Peace Corps in Mozambique, gave a speech and wished us well. Then we had a representative of our group, Richard, give a speech on our behalf (his Portuguese is amazing and his speech was phenomenal. I was kind of glad that he was wearing muddy shoes so that at least SOMETHING wasn't perfect.) Finally, the Ambassador gave a speech and then administered the Oath of Office to us -- the same oath that all government employees take (including the President!).

Speeches! From left to right: Carl (Director of Peace Cops Mozambique), Richard (Moz 19 PCV) and the Ambassador

We performed a song to close the ceremony. I was so excited I forgot the words to my verse.

It was really exciting to be sworn in, but for an additional reason that is special to our group. Moz 19, the biggest group ever to grace the presence of Mozambique (68 volunteers!), got through ten whole weeks of training with ZERO Early Terminations. That is really, really unusual. Most of the time, at least one or two people either don't bother showing up, turn around at the airport, or quit halfway through training. We had a huge group and yet none of us went home -- we are all still going strong. The moment the Ambassador pronounced us volunteers sealed the deal. Its kind of a big deal! Now, I don't want to brag, but also our training manager (and organizational goddess) Claudia told us that we were possibly the best group to come through in some time. Sweet!

"Voltando a vaca fria" (Which means "Getting back on topic" but literally "Returning to the cold cow"), swearing-In was hectic but great. What was not so great was that, because we were late and it was raining and everything was crazy, we had basically zero time to mingle after the ceremony. We had just enough time to grab finger food and a soda and take a group picture before we were shuffled back outside and onto our busses. It was a bummer because I wanted to meet some of the Embassy staff and take pictures with my friends, and there just wasn't time. Our next conference all together is Mid-Service in about a year, so its going to be a while before I see these people again! I did manage to take a few pictures, though, so I am going to stop rambling now and let the photos speak for themselves.

My capulana dress! It came out really well!

This is me with Szasha, the closest volunteer to me in Tete. We are about 20km apart and are going to be seeing a lot of each other. Here we are preparing to be best friends.

This is my favorite picture of the day. These are three of my closest friends here. Sarah on the left, then me, Veronica and Lisa. Sarah and Lisa are both in central so I will see them on and off, but Veronica is in the south and it's going to be a while before I see her again. But that's what telephones are for. I am just going to have to budget a certain amount of money each month for Veronica minutes.

So there you have it. I feel prepared to go to site now. I am armed with Portuguese, teaching methodology, and most importantly, a pretty amazing support network. Now the real adventure begins... the next post you will see will be from TETE! That's right! My HOUSE in TETE! You just WAIT!

Goodbye, Namaacha!

And thus ends training! How is it that ten weeks can feel both like so long and so short? It feels like just yesterday that I was sitting Virginia eating fro-yo the day before leaving for staging, and yet I felt like such a part of my host family that it is weird to think that we were only there for ten weeks and not out whole lives.

I lucked out when it came to my host family. Some of the other volunteers had issues, like not getting along with members of their host families, not getting enough fruits and veggies, or having overcontrolling host moms. I had a great host family, and when it came to giving evaluations at the end I really counldn't think of a single thing to write in under complaints -- instead I wrote this two page essay singing my family's praises. And in addition to my family, there were cool people that came to visit our house a lot -- my host uncle, a local journalist, was always up for a stimulating conversation about current events or media or cultural differences. But my favorite person, possibly in all of Namaacha, was Zulfa.

This is Zulfa. She's my favorite Namaachan.

Zulfa is my little sister's best friend. She thinks the smallest things are really funny and is super good-natured about everything. She's also really smart. Often at night I would sit in the kitchen in the evenings, watching Mamá make dinner and Zulfa would come sit on my lap. Good times. I am going to miss her.

But all things come to an end, and our training came to an end with a bang! Two bangs, in fact. First, while still in Namaacha, we had our homestay celebration, or "Despedida". It was really fun -- we all had our families with us and got to celebrate. First there were some speeches, and then we did what Mozambicans do best -- eat a mountain of food, and then there was surprise cake! We finished with some fun songs and games for the kids benefit, and each host family got a certificate for having their volunteer successfully make it through training.

Here are some pictures of Despedida:

Veronica and Yuri represent the trainees in a speech of thanks to the families and officials of Namaacha.

We did a song for the moms.

Poster Queens Lisa and I made this for Despedida.

Sarah and Gina work hard making salad for the feast.

They had a cool tribal group that performed dances and songs for us.

My family and our certificate! Check out the hilarious expression on my little sister's face. Sometimes when we're eating dinner, I look over and she's staring at me like that. It's scary.

Delicious Despedida cake! Soooooo good.

Finally, on the note of training ending, I wanted to give a shout-out to two particularly awesome Mozambicans. Much of Pre-Service training is spent in language class, but our teachers taught us much more than Portuguese -- we also went to them with questions about cultural ettiquette ("Why does my mom come in the bathroom when I'm bathing?") or random questions about Mozambique. They are called our Language and Cross-Cultural Facilitators. During PST I had two of them and they were both really great. The first one was Meque:

 Meque teaches us how to sing the Mozambican national anthem in three-part harmony.

Meque is really funny because he's so caught up in being too cool for school. He was a great teacher, but it was so funny because we could tell that, when we went to have our field trip in Maputo, he didn't really want to be seen walking on his turf with this group of six dorky Americans. And when we had our session on Permagardening, he showed up to farm in these brilliant white pants. But on our last session together, he told us we were a great class and he was going to miss us a lot. Maybe he tells that to everyone, but it seemed sincere and we are going to miss him too.

Halfway through trianing, we switched teachers, and we were super reluctant to do so because we really liked Meque. Little did we know what was in store for us when we got Parrouque! He's such a dynamic teacher, really upbeat and positive, super creative in teaching us complicated things (like the conjunctive tense). He also gives these really fulfilling fistbumps when you get something right in class. My only complaint about him was that he kept promising us that he'd bring a photograph of his son to class so we could communally "Awwwwwwwwwwwwww!" about it, but he never did! Lame. Anyway, I wanted to get a picture of Parrouque with our Portuguese language group, but we ran out of time during swearing-in and it never happened. In any case, this is him:

This is Parrouque. Imagine what his son looks like! Probably adorable. Too bad he never brought us that photo!

The Peace Corps has a really strong language program and its mostly thanks to awesome people like these. Because of them, I can (kind of) speak fluent Portuguese now! I still sound like an idiot, but I think that's just how I speak. In any case, I hope they know how much they are appreciated!

Thanksgiving in Namaacha

I realize that Thanksgiving was some time ago, but I thought it deserved its own post because we had such a fantastic celebration. You might think that thanksgiving in Africa, hosted by a bunch of broke Peace Corps volunteers who are in class ten hours a day, would be really depressing, but it was quite the contrary. Peace Corps tends to attract a lot of organizey, motivated types -- we are the type of people that form committees for everything -- Turkey Committee, Mashed Potato Committee, etc.  And thus, Moz 19 Thanksgiving occurred and it was quite a spectacle.
I was in charge of decorations and I had a grand total of 100 meticais for my budget. That comes out to about three American dollars, plus whatever natural resources I could find lying around Namaacha. I thought I did pretty well, considering the size of the budget. Check out the kick-ass centerpieces I made!

Lisa and I crafted these centerpieces from stuff we found lying around the Math hub.

We also had this cute poster where people could write what they were thankful for.

Cute set-up, huh? It was like having a really huge, very strange family dinner.

 And then there was the food. Don't even get me STARTED on the food. We had turkey (SO MUCH TURKEY), mashed potatoes, green beans, stuffing, sweet potato, fruit salad, salad salad, xima and matapa (Mozambican food), and DESSERTS! Ugh. I am salivating right now just thinking about it. Apple crisp, pumpkin pie, apple pie, brownies, chocolate chip cookies... it was quite a feast.

Check out this super legit dessert banquet. Is this Africa??

Lisa, Mafe and Sarah pig out on delicious comida.

  We were all so intensely eating and enjoying the taste of good home-cooked American food that our tables were silent for a good twenty minutes -- which is quite a feat, because whenever we have big group sessions and people are supposed to be being quiet, we can never manage to do it -- so you know that food was good.

  I have got to say, it was pretty awesome to be able to celebrate Thanksgiving with everyone in our training group. The next big holiday coming up is Christmas, of course, by which time we will already be separated and at our sites. Thanksgiving felt like we were back in America for an evening -- I have a feeling Christmas is going to be much harder. It kind of helps that there's scorching heat every day, so it doesn't feel at all like the holidays -- but there are commercials on TV and radio that are starting to play Christmas carols and it just seems really weird to be so far from home for the holidays.

So what am I thankful for? I'm really thankful that I can live and work here, in this awesome country with such diverse and friendly people, surrounded by 67 fantastic colleagues and supported by my fantastic family back home.

Lisa and I drew this poster while listening to cheesy Swedish pop songs.

But I'm not going to lie, most of all, I'm thankful that there was apple crisp at our party. I LOVE apple crisp.