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!