Staying Optimistic

Peace Corps life is stressful and makes sane people feel crazy. One moment, you're making jokes with your students, loving life, laughing, and the next moment, you want to crawl under the covers and never come out again. I've been pretty lucky so far. I would say I've definitely had fewer emotional breakdowns than the average PCV does by this time in their service.

But living in a foreign country, alone, surrounded by people you don't know is bound to get even the most resilient of people down, and I was down this week. I missed two days of school due to illness, and I found myself wishing I was still sick so I wouldn't have to go to school for the rest of the week. I didn't want to come out of my house, didn't want to come out of my room or even get out of bed. I didn't pick up my guitar or my sketchbook -- I just watched movies and slept, and felt generally devoid of energy.

It's difficult to be so far away from everyone else. More than once I have wished that I could switch sites and live anywhere that's closer to other volunteers -- or, most of all, wished for a sitemate. Sometimes I do get jealous of the people who seem to have integrated perfectly into their communities already, people who seem like everybody adores them and nothing bothers them. The "perfect" Peace Corps Volunteers.

However, I know that lying in bed all day is not a good way to battle the blues, so I forced myself to make a list of things that I can do to lift my spirits. My favorite things, Sound of Music-style. These include: talking to people (friends, family, neighbors), creative endeavors (guitar, sketching, writing), food (hot chocolate, cooking, peanut butter), being active (stretching, yoga), cleaning (laundry, dishes, hair), and making plans (for tomorrow, for the next two years, for the rest of my life...) It also helps me to think about what my life would be like if I weren't here. I'd likely still be working  and living in Houston -- which was fun, but frustratingly future-less.  I had some pretty stressful moments back then, too. Thinking about that helps me remember why I came here in the first place.

So last night, I made up my mind to do several of the items on my list to lift my spirits. Operation Positive Thinking. I washed some clothes, washed some dishes, talked to Lisa, talked to Szasha, talked to my mom, cuddled with Poppy, sketched the sunset, and wrote in my journal whilst listening to calming music.

It made such a difference. Today, I woke up and I felt much happier. Less anxious, more energetic. I walked into my most challenging class and I just taught, all the while telling myself that later on I would reward myself with naan and curry for dinner. It helped! I looked at all the blank faces staring back at me, and instead of getting disappointed, I just thought about naan and curry.

"Who knows the answer to the next question?"

*SILENCE*

"Anybody?"

*A pin drops.*

"Nobody at all?"

*A cricket chirps.*

"Whatever, I'm eating naan and curry for dinner tonight, suckers!"

OK, maybe that's not exactly how it went down. But you get the point.

Shake it off! OPTIMISM!

The product of my evening mood-lifting sketch session.

Being Sick Abroad

I’ve been feeling under the weather for the past couple of days. It started last week, when I began to feel tired all the time. I’d get up, teach one class, and come home and need a three hour nap. In my college psychology classes, we learned about hindsight bias – how things always seem much more obvious when you look back on them than they did at the time. Sleeping 14 hours a day is clearly not normal behavior, but I chalked it up to being worn out from teaching or some kind of Lariam side-effect. It was only as I was dragging my feet through the city days later, dizzy and nauseous, barely able to eat half of my meal, when I considered the past few days and thought “Huh. I must be getting sick.”

Luckily, the Peace Corps doctors are on call 24/7 and are only a phone call away. Within half an hour, I had a prescription and was buying an antibiotic in a pharmacy. Szasha, awesome as she is, went and bought the last of my groceries for me so I could rest in an air-conditioned store. When I got home, I went straight to bed and didn’t get up until 11 a.m. today. (My neighbors must think I’m insane.)

So far this afternoon, three of my colleagues have stopped by to make sure I’m OK. One of them offered to lend me one of her children to stay with me and cook and clean while I get better. Another one offered to sleep in my living room in case I get worse or need anything. My director demanded I text him regularly with updates. Lisa and Szasha have both called several times to check on me and make sure I’m still conscious (I am, by the way, thanks!)

I’ve heard from people back home several times that it must be "tough" to be sick when you’re abroad, and how hard it must be to live out here alone. I’m not going to dispute that…being sick is not fun no matter where you are. But I have three support systems right now – my Mozambican colleagues and neighbors, Peace Corps friends and staff, and American family and friends, and all three are regularly checking up on me.

This fact makes me think about my neighbors here. My town is really fortunate – we have a health center, so people who get sick actually have the chance to see a nurse or even a doctor. People here, who have the benefit of education, know what malaria and AIDS are and how to treat them. But some people can’t afford medicines, or can’t take the time to leave their families to see a doctor. Many towns don’t have a doctor within many miles. The doctor to population ratio for Mozambique is staggeringly low. And so, doctor or no doctor, when people here get sick, they don’t get to sleep it off in bed with cold water and a fan pointed at them like I do. They can’t call in sick like I can. They have to keep working, because otherwise their families don’t eat. They just have to deal with it, and that's just how life is.

The other day, I was in a chapa and behind me was a woman holding a baby. The baby was visibly ill -- barely moving, eyes unfocused, head falling to the side. The baby was clearly not doing well, and the mother was on the brink of tears. The woman next to her tapped her on the shoulder.

"Your capulana is crooked. Fix it so you look decent," she said.

No condolences. No "Can I do anyhting to help you?" or "Sorry your baby is dying." Just "Fix your clothing." As heartless as this may seem, there's a reason for it. Babies get sick and die here all the time. The infant mortality rate is incredibly high. Sometimes, the tough-love attitude is all you can take to keep going.

Really makes you stop and think about what “tough” really means.

Down Came the Rain

Back in the states, I didn't think about rain very much. If I woke up and it happened to be raining, my only thought was this:

"Hmm. Guess I'd better take an umbrella to work today."

Rain didn't mean much. It just happened and was sometimes kind of inconvenient. It was a good excuse to sing "Rain, rain go away" with the preschoolers.

Collecting rainwater.

Here, it couldn't be more different. When I hear the tell-tale pitter-patter of the first few droplets of drizzle on my tin roof, a thousand thoughts immediately rush through my head. Do I have any laundry hanging outside that I need to bring in? Should I go to the latrine before the dirt in front of my house turns into a mud pit? How much water do I have, and how many buckets are free to collect more? Are all my electronics charged in case the power goes out? Is my flashlight and emergency candle in a readily accessible place? Are all my belongings off of floor level in case water seeps in? Where is Poppy, and is she going to be OK?

When it rains here, it monsoons. I have always kind of liked storms, but the rain here is something else. When the power goes out, even if it's sunny outside, I know the rain is coming, that the storm is on its way here from Cahora Bassa just up the Zambezi river. Sure enough, within a half hour or so, the clouds from over the mountain range loom darkly, water-logged and advancing quickly. The droplets start to fall, softly at first, a quiet warning of what's to come, and within a few minutes the sound of millions of gigantic raindrops pelting my roof is deafening. Roads turn into rivers, ditches into lakes. People huddle together, waiting it out. They worry that they might get struck by lighting -- it's not unheard of here. Occasionally, the thunder claps so loud you feel it rattle every bone in your body. The clouds hang so low that you can barely see across the street, making it feel like the storm is everywhere, always, and will never stop. And yet, eventually, it starts to slow. Little by little, the noise subsides. Soon you can hear individual raindrops hitting the roof -- and then, eventually, you hear nothing. The streets are muddy. Everything is soaked. The sky clears, and the African sun comes back out. Within a couple of hours, it will bake the dirt dry again.

Chokwe, in Gaza province. Photo by Nick O.

I have never thought about rain this much, but right now it's on everybody's mind. It has been raining a lot recently -- much more than usual, and all at once. Parts of Mozambique are flooding, and thousands are being affected. The Limpopo river in the south has risen uncontrollably and has drowned Gaza and Maputo provinces. Up in my part of the country, the Zambezi river level is rising, but is holding. Tete is fairly far up-river and hasn't felt the effects yet, but volunteers and citizens downriver from me are on red alert and may have to evacuate. Many poeple have died this week and thousands have lost their homes. If it keeps raining like this every day, who knows what will happen?

Right on cue, my power just went out. Sure enough, I spy dark clouds coming from the mountains.

Here we go again. Rain, rain, go away!

My First Lessons

Last Tuesday morning, which was supposed to be the first day of school, I woke up a bundle of nerves. "It'll be OK," I told myself. "Once you get past the first lesson, you'll feel a lot calmer. You just need to get through today." The seconds ticked by like hours until the time I was scheduled to give my lesson. Finally, I put on my bata and walked over to the school... which was deserted. Not a single student in sight. I came across my pedagogical director and asked him where everyone was.

"Oh, you were planning on teaching today?" he laughed. "That's cute."

And so, still having not taught a lesson, I went home. I woke up on Wednesday morning with a pit in my stomach.

"Don't think about yesterday. Today's the day. You can do this! Just get through the first lesson and it'll be OK."

But it was not to be. A second time, I walked to school and found: not a single student. Lovely. Defeated, I trudged home again.

I woke up on Thursday, exponentially more agitated, but also determined to teach someone something. I waked determinedly to school, and -- lo ad behold!-- found a couple of students wandering around aimlessly. No other teachers were there. Not really sure what my plan was, I wandered into a random classroom. It was empty, but soon enough, a few kids trickled in and sat down, staring at me curiously. No doubt they were thinking "What on earth is the crazy muzungu doing now?" But they were smiling and paying attention to me. Clearly whatever I was about to do was more interesting than nothing.

I didn't teach them much. They were a mish-mash of students from 7th through 10th grade and I had no plan. But I did have some fun with them -- I taught them some words they could use with their friends - including 'What's up?' and it's shortened form 'Sup?' They thought it was hilarious. "Sup! Sup! Sup!" they chanted.

My mini-lesson was only fifteen minutes long, but it did the trick. I went to bed that night feeling so much calmer. I can do this!

This week started out so much better. I was a little nervous, but nothing compared to the week-long heart-attack-in-waiting that was last week. At this point, I've taught all of my classes at least once, and all of my lessons went OK! Not great, but OK. There were ups and downs:

The Downs:

• Despite the fact that most of these kids have had English instruction since 6th grade with good teachers, many of my tenth graders can barely string a sentence together.
• I really need to work out a system of remembering what I did with each class. I have seven turmas (classes) and, after the first lesson, I'm already confused. ("Uh... did we do the verb "to like" yesterday? Or was that the other class?")
• One of my eighth graders walked by my house this evening and said "That family diagram made no sense today, Professora!" all the while giving me a cheerful thumbs up. At least he was friendly about it.

The Ups:

• Most of my students were present! By my 9th grade afternoon class today, I had 53 students -- almost everybody!
• Most of them speak decent enough Portuguese for me to be able to explain exercises and whatnot to them in Portuguese. As much as I'd like to use English all the time, I have limited class time and I don't want to waste 10 minutes explaining something in English that I could do in 10 seconds using Portuguese -- most of the time, there's something more useful I could be doing with that class time.
• My students are all really well behaved! They are very hesitant to participate in class, but that will change with time. At least I don't have crazy rowdy kids! (Yet...)
• There are some really bright students in my classes! Thank goodness for that handful of students that actually wants to answer my questions and come up to the board.
• My roommate (the other English teacher) told me that one of my students excitedly told her that "Professora Helena is so clear and easy to understand!" Victory!

I sneaked a picture of my 8th graders while they worked.

But do you want to know the best part of all?

I am having so much fun!

It's been a quite some time since  I've taught, and I have a feeling that's a big part of the reason why I was such a ball of nerves last week. If teaching was just something I was assigned to do for 2 years of Peace Corps service, maybe I wouldn't have stressed myself out so much. But teaching is something I am (and have been) seriously considering as a career. I was so worried -- what if I am a bad teacher? What if I hate it? But I needn't have worried, because guess what?

I LOVE TEACHING!

It's nice to know.

A Weekend in Zobwe

This weekend, Szasha and I took a little trip over to the cute town of Zobwe, which lies two hours east of Tete City. There, we visited our closest volunteer neighbors, Dan and Lisa, who have been in Mozambique for a year already. Other than us and the older married couple that live way up in the north of Tete, Dan and Lisa are the only other volunteers in our province -- so we were really happy when we met them and discovered how fun they are! Lisa has a really interesting blog, which I highly recommend you read! She writes very well and also posts beautiful photographs.

Dan and Lisa were really excited to show us around Zobwe, their gorgeous village in the mountains bordering Malawi. Zobwe is not a big town, but it is right on the border, so a lot of traffic goes through it. 

Zobwe

As we walked through the village, everyone knew who Dan and Lisa were. A chorus of "Teacher Lisa!", "Teacher Danny!" and "Good morning!" followed us wherever we went. It's nice to be able to see what life could be like in my town a few months down the road -- slightly less staring, slightly more "Good afternoon, Teacher Helena!"
The town is overlooked by and named after Mount Zobwe, a mountain which we set out to climb bright and early on Saturday morning.

Mount Zobwe

Unfortunately, since Dan and Lisa had last been up the mountain, it had rained a lot, and so the easy-to-follow trails and manageable grass had turned into an African jungle of tall grasses, stinging nettles, and thick bushes. Prime habitat for snakes!

Szasha, Dan and Lisa stomp through the Jungle.

Luckily, we didn't encounter any snakes, though I did develop a somewhat concerning rash on my arms from an allergic reaction to the plants we were wading through. (No worries, it went away.) The going was slow and arduous, and a couple of times we thought we'd have to turn back -- especially since none of us were really wearing jungle-appropriate footwear. (In fact, Lisa climbed the whole mountain in flip-flops!)

But we made it! Whew. The view from the top of the mountain was breathtaking.

As I mentioned, the mountaintop marks part of the border between Mozambique and Malawi. There's a border post on the top, which we couldn't resist goofing off on.

I've been to Malawi!

By the time we got down the mountain again, it was lunchtime and we were tired and starving. Never has a bucket bath felt so refreshing and grilled chicken tasted so good. We spent the rest of the day lazing about, eating, playing bananagrams, shopping, and watching a movie. It was a great weekend.

I'm back home again now, and it's good to be back. It's hot, but what else is new? The weekend passed so quickly, and it's hard to believe tomorrow is Monday again. However, I am looking forward to classes starting for real tomorrow (hopefully). We'll see how many of my 10th graders show up -- but I have a feeling that maybe by tomorrow I will actually be able to write about my first few lessons! Stay tuned.

What I Usually Eat

I've gotten a couple of questions about what I eat on a daily basis, so I thought I’d write about it.

My town is one of the few Peace Corps sites in Mozambique that doesn't have a year-round market due to the fact that it’s really tiny. Most families just grow their own food—but since I live on school grounds, this is not an option for me. There are one or two bancas on the road where on occasion you can buy spaghetti or tuna -- but for the rest of my shopping, I have to go to Tete City, an hour away. There are pros and cons to this -- on the upside, Tete is an awesome place where I can enjoy falafel sandwiches and ice cream in a nice air conditioned cafe on a weekly basis. On the downside, it takes a long time to get there, the city is an expensive place to hang out, and most of all, planning out a weeks’ worth of food, fitting it all into two shopping bags, and lugging it home on the ever-so-crowded chapa is difficult at best.

Due to the cost of meat and the fact that I’m freaked out by killing chickens, I’ve become 98% vegetarian. Eating a nutritious diet is therefore even more difficult, especially because I can only shop once a week, and fruits and vegetables go bad very quickly. I had one particularly desperate meal to date which consisted of a bouillon cube in hot water with "dumplings" made of nothing more than water and flour. (I was really scraping the barrel as far as food reserves go. I had nothing left.) I told myself it was "chicken soup with dumplings," but I am fully aware that I basically ate saltwater and flour for dinner. Never again!

On the flip side, the first few days after I go shopping are like Christmas come early. On those days, I have a wide assortment of fruits and vegetables, my meals are nutritious and delicious, and the amount of trash I produce is next to nothing. Needless to say, I love the first few days after I go shopping.

I think of my dietary habits as having three stages:

Stage 1: “Abundance”:
Just went shopping – food, glorious food! I binge eat wonderfully vitamin-rich fruits, vegetables and fresh bread before they go bad. Best days of the week!

Stage 2: “Mais ou Menos”
The hardier veggies, like potatoes and onions, are still good to eat, and I use them in conjunction with canned peas, carrots, and chick peas to make still pretty decent and protein-rich meals.

Stage 3: “Malnutrition”
 I need to go shopping. All my perishable and canned goods are gone. I am living off of bouillon cubes, xima, and ramen. I save my corn flakes for this troublesome time so I still have something to look forward to eating every day.

	Breakfast	Lunch/Dinner	Treat
Stage 1	Peanut Butter and Banana sandwich with fresh bread	Fried rice with vegetables or split pea soup	Cucumber salad or fresh fruits
Stage 2	Scrambled eggs or oatmeal	Pasta with tomato or alfredo sauce, or rice and beans.	Orange juice or hot chocolate
Stage 3	Corn flakes	Ramen, chicken noodle soup, batatas fritas.	A Jolly Rancher (melted)

Definitely, the hardest thing about eating here is getting enough vitamins and protein. I try to plan ahead as much as possible, but it’s still very difficult. Thankfully, Peace Corps sends me supplements in case I’m not getting enough of something.

I must say, though, difficulties aside, it has been fun getting to enjoy cooking. In myapartment in Houston, I was usually in a rush or my friends would invite me to eat out – so there wasn’t much incentive or enough time to really cook decent meals for myself. Here, I don’t have the option of going out to eat, and I usually have nothing to do anyway, so I can take my time and experiment a bit. The other day, I made some pretty tasty jam-filled fried dumplings for dessert! I considered it a victory.

Next step: Learn to make legitimate Mozambican food!

Ceremonies and the Start of School

One thing that I've noticed about Mozambicans is that they love routines, and one of their favorites is a good ceremony. There are ceremonies for almost everything, and they all follow a specific pattern. I will illustrate with the example of our Start of School Ceremony that took place today.

1. Ceremonies do not start on time.

I was told by my director yesterday that our ceremony would start today "around nine."  When I got to school, it was pretty much deserted. Of the few people that were there, everyone seemed to have something to do except me -- and when I asked if I could help, people just told me to go sit down and wait. So I sat and waited. And waited. And waited. I clearly have not gotten the hang of Mozambican time yet.

2. Ceremonies always involve parades and singing.

At half past ten, we walked down into the heart of the village and sat under a huge, leafy tree and waited for the administrator from the Ministry of Education to come so that we could march through the town to school together, singing a welcome song. All the village elders were gathered and seated on stools in front of the tree. The community members perched on the vast web of roots extending out from the enormous tree-trunk. Poppy decided that she really needed to sit smack in the middle of all the professors, and crawled over half of the townspeople to get there.

We were told that the representative of the Ministry of Education would be there daqui a nada ("in no time") and so we waited there for him a little more than an hour, only to find out he wasn't coming to the parade. The group trudged back to school, singing anyway (because why walk in silence when you can walk in song?) All the songs were in Nyungwe, so I only understood a few words and grammatical markers here and there -- to my Linguist Ears, the lyrics were thus:

"School" blah blah blah verb in the infinitive blah blah noun class blah
Blah "you" blah adjective marker blah blah third person pronoun
Blah blah "Mavudzi-Ponte" blah blah "Tete"
Yayayayayaya!

3. Ceremonies include Very Important People giving Very Important Speeches.

At the front of the biggest biggest classroom of the school, a long table stood draped in capulanas and the Mozambican flag with a row of seats for the guests of honor and the community elders. The ceremony began with a painfully slow rendition of the painfully long and painfully repetitive Mozambican National Anthem, followed by a wonderfully concise prayer by the church leader.

First the Pedagogical Director introduced himself and the director, and then all the teachers introduced themselves. My director had joked that he was going to make me sing "an American song" for everyone, and I was more than a little worried he wasn't joking -- but thankfully my introduction came and went without incident.

The director then went over statistics from last year -- how many students in the school, how many teachers, exam results, pass rates, etc.  He then gave an overview of what the challenges facing the school are and what they hope to achieve this year. More on that later, as it was very interesting and deserves its own post.

The rest was decidedly less interesting -- a really long series of speeches by people representing other people ("O Senhor is representing the Honorable and Glorious Assistant Vice Deputy Secondary Undersecretary of the Ministry of Who-Knows-What.") Thankfully, these speeches were in Portuguese, though I'm not sure if that helped or hurt my urge to fall asleep -- at least the polite clapping following each speech and was enough to jolt me temporarily back into wakefulness.

4. There are refrescos and lots of hand-shaking at the end.

I met a lot of people today, whose names I am expected to remember, but will not. My director is a jovial man, but has an unfortunate habit of pointing to random people and loudly saying "Pop quiz! What's his/her name?" and it's really embarrassing when I don't know -- which is the case most of the time. My colleagues are my priority and I'd say I have about half of their names down.

In any case, I met lots of important town and district people today who I wouldn't recognize tomorrow if they passed me on the street (so let's hope they don't!) At this point it was two hours past my normal lunch time and I was running on empty. Needless to say, when Redi told me I was free to go home for the day, I bolted.

And that was a typical Mozambican Ceremony. Now, the school year has officially begun, and classes start tomorrow. Ironically, I still don't have my class schedule, but that's apparently not a big deal because no one comes to school until the third week anyway. Lovely.

Stay tuned for tomorrow's report of my first day of teaching.

C is for Cheesecake

The other day, I thought of cheesecake and I couldn’t stop thinking about cheesecake. So I made a list. I’m a list-maker. Sometimes I even make lists of lists that I want to make.
True story.

The One Dozen Foods I Crave Most Right Now

I think I am having sugar withdrawal.

1. A giant slice of Strawberry Cheesecake and a mug of hot chocolate from House of Pies.
2. Caitlin’s delicious cheesecake. Forget a slice – I’ll eat the whole cake.
3. Cheesecake milkshake from Katz' Deli (Noticing a cheesecake theme here?)
4. Sweet cream ice cream with strawberries and crushed Oreos from Amy’s Ice Cream.
5. Flank steak, homemade macaroni and cheese, German cucumber salad and a strawberry banana smoothie.
6. Filet mignon wrapped in bacon, with mashed potatoes and freshly-squeezed orange juice.
7. Sour cream enchiladas, nachos with Creamy J sauce, and a strawberry daiquiri from Chuy's.
8. Beef quesadillas (with guacamole, salsa, and pineapple), a slice of tres leches cake, and a margarita from 100% Taquito.
9. Red velvet cupcake from Crave.
10. White chocolate mocha or caramel frappucino from Starbucks.
11. Vanilla Cappuccino with boba, not blended, from Teahouse.
12. Home-cooked food. Of any variety.

One Dozen Mozambican Foods I Can’t Get Enough Of

Matapa and feijão with rice

1. Xima. The staple of the Mozambican diet, made of corn flour boiled into a thick consistency and eaten with absolutely everything. By itself, it doesn’t taste like anything, but with other stuff it absorbs all the flavors -- yum! (Incidentally, this is what my dog eats practically every day.)
2. Galinha grelhada. Delicious freshly slaughtered chicken grilled to perfection over a charcoal stove. As far as eating out goes, it’s one of the cheaper options, and oh so delicious. The gravy tastes great with xima!
3. Batatas Fritas. French fries. Beloved by Americans and Mozambicans alike and eaten here all the time. French fries for breakfast? Bring it on!
4. Mangos, avocados, litchis and pineapples. So cheap. So nutritious. So tasty. However, I have discovered the hard way that you can in fact eat too many mangos.
5. Couve. Possibly my favorite Mozam-meal. Delicious collared-green type leaves cooked with coconut milk and peanut flour. Simply scrumptious! And very nutritious, too!
6. Matapa. Made from the leaves of the cassava plant, also boiled in coconut milk and peanut flour.
7. Cacana doce. This meal seems to be quite divisive amongst volunteers. Cacana is a bitter leaf, sort of like arugula, and when made with sweet coconut milk and peanut flour, the combination of flavors is wonderful. However – stale, badly grown, or ill-prepared cacana has the potential to be really bitter and unpalatable. My host mom made awesome cacana. Then again, my host mom made the best everything. (Well, the best Mozambican everything. My real mom makes the best everything else.)
8. Feijão. I could eat feijão every day and not tire of it –beans prepared in the traditional Mozambican fashion, normally eaten with rice or xima. Throw some meat and vegetables in there, some spices, and mmmmmm. Perfection. Plus, it’s a great source of protein, which is good because at this point I’ve become 98% vegetarian and get my protein from beans and peanut butter. Speaking of which, the next item on the list is
9. Black Cat Peanut Butter. OK, technically it’s from South Africa, like a lot of specialty products here, but it’s so creamy and delicious and it deserves to be on this list due to its status as a PCV and personal favorite. The perfect way to end a day is to curl up in bed with a jar or Black Cat, a spoon, and a good book.
10. Chamussas. Known in the rest of the world as “samosas.” OK, maybe not a traditional Mozambican food either, but widely eaten here and pretty darn delicious. Reminds me of hanging out at Xavi’s after class during PST with my fellow volunteers – much like the next thing on the list,
11. Manica beer! Mm, tastes like PST and friendship!
12. Piri-Piri Sauce. Otherwise known as “African Bird’s-Eye Chili.” It’s hot, spicy, and it’s in pretty much everything I make. There are few foods in the world that wouldn’t taste better with a dash of Piri-Piri sauce. (Cheesecake is one of them.)

Note: I may have stolen this idea from Lissa’s blog.

First Day of "Work"

Considering school starts on Monday, I still know very little about what I’m actually going to be doing here. I wake up each morning and have no idea if I’m going to be needed at work or not. I still don’t know how many hours per week I’m teaching, how many classes I have, what level they’re at, and what days and times they are.

So today, when Redi walked in after lunch and said “Come, Professora Helena, we’re going to school to go make the curriculum for the first trimester,” I followed, feeling quite apprehensive. I have no idea how to plan a curriculum, and the official books of Mozambique are of little use. What grammatical points are you supposed to teach when the only prompt is “common problems with traditional and modern agriculture in Mozambique”? (And that’s for a beginner class – I think that’a tad optimistic.)  I was having horrible visions of me sitting in front of an empty paper with an equally empty brain, while other teachers furiously plan away, my director thinking disappointedly “Why is the Peace Corps wasting our time with this useless excuse for a teacher?”

That fear is still very much alive, but I got through the day and it went all right. Turns out “planning the curriculum” means “copying last year’s curriculum and changing the dates.” And even though the dates all say school starts next week, all the teachers were seemingly ignoring that fact because apparently, no one comes to school during the first week of classes. That takes some of the pressure off – at least I can ease into teaching.

I’m still very nervous though. What am I going to do with a half-empty class for the first week? How am I going to plan productive lessons around the very un-productive national curriculum? What if my students never show up? What if they don’t like me? What if I don’t like them? What if no one understands my weird American accent? What if no one understands my Portuguese when I try to explain my weird American accent?  What if they ask questions and I don’t know what they’re asking? What if, what if, what if?

I have a feeling the next couple of weeks are going to be incredibly stressful and exhausting. I keep telling myself that I’m lucky. They say the first three months at site are the hardest, and so far it’s been very manageable. No major curveballs yet. So if it’s only going up from here, well, I think I’ll be OK.  

 I hope.

It’s the Little Things

Sometimes, the smallest thing can make you go crazy. I think this is a universal truth, but it’s especially relevant here.
I can deal with not having running water. I can deal with frequent electricity outages. I can deal with hordes of cockroaches in the latrine. I can deal with homesickness. I can deal with the heat. I can deal with the fact that very few people in my community speak Portuguese and I speak 5 words total of the local language, Nyungwe. I can deal with isolation.

These are things that are constantly affecting me, and so I don’t even notice them anymore. They’re just a part of life. And yet, the smallest thing can make you snap.

For dinner tonight, I was going to make feijão (beans) with rice – one of my favorite meals. You have to soak the beans overnight before you can cook them so last night I dutifully set my beans to soak. The electricity was out for several hours this afternoon, so I played guitar for a bit and read a bit of the anthology of influential linguistics papers I’ve been working through. My eyelids got heavier and heavier, and before I knew it, I had fallen asleep.

I awoke to a weird sound. Scrape, clatter, scrape. I dismissed it as Poppy nudging her bowl around. Scrape, clatter, scrape. Ugh, shut up, Poppy, I’m trying to sleep and its too early for your dinner. Scrape, clatter, scrape.

Finally, I got up and I walked out to the main room, and what did I see?

Goats.

Yep, they’re at it again. While I was sleeping, they wandered in, knocked the pot off the table, scattering beans across the living room, and were busy licking the beans off the floor. There were beans, bean juice, goats, chickens, and flies everywhere. I lost it.

“Sai! SAI!” I fumed. “Stupid GOATS! Get out of my HOUSE! Stop eating my BEANS! AAAAARGHH!”

I spent the next half hour cleaning the floor and doing dishes. After realizing that, without beans, my meal would consist of rice only, I started preparing some more beans to try speed-soaking.

Then the power went out, and with it, my capacity to use my hot plate and boil or cook anything.

That’s it. I’m done. Tonight, dinner is peanut butter and crackers. If anyone needs me, I’ll be eating Black Cat by the spoonful and watching How I Met Your Mother.

Lariam Dreams

Malaria is a raging problem in this country, and kills more people than AIDS annually. Mozambicans have somewhat of a tolerance built up, but visitors like us are particularly susceptible to getting it, and it's not a pretty illness. Therefore, Peace Corps has us on some fairly serious anti-malaria medicine called Lariam. It's a big, bitter once-a-week pill that gets stuck in your throat no matter how much water you try to wash it down with. The military stopped using it because (on rare occasions) it makes people go off the deep end (and you generally don't want heavily armed people going crazy). However, we unarmed Peace Corps volunteers are still on it, and the side effects most of us notice are frequent urination and really strange dreams.

 

Before taking Lariam, I didn't dream very often because I am such a heavy sleeper. However, now I find myself dreaming quite regularly -- so I've taken to documenting my weirder dreams. Upon waking from a particularly off-the-wall dream, I enter a one-sentence summary in a text file I keep on my desktop called "LariamDreams.txt". Here are some of the more interesting (and sometimes disturbing) entries for your amusement:

• A man started systematically hunting down and killing my family members because of a hugely successful board game we invented.
• I tried to check out of a hotel, but they found a dead guy shrink-wrapped in the closet of my room and arrested me. (This was right after I watched Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Great movie, by the way!)
• I kept finding crazy pre-historic bug-bird hybrids in my house, but when I captured them and tried to show them to my family they would change into everyday household objects, like napkins or plungers.
• I was at school, and a student died, but dismissal time was so hectic that I forgot to call her mom and tell her about it and it was really awkward when she showed up to pick up her child.
• A stalker followed me all day, so I ran into a Subway restaurant, threw 7-Up on him and stabbed him with a fork. (Justice served!)
• There was a bomb scare in Namaacha, but I slept through the alarm, and when I woke up everyone was gone and I had several angry text messages from Claudia, our training manager.
• I was having coffee at the Riverwalk and one of the riverboats sank -- I dived in and tried to rescue people, but couldn't swim fast enough and everyone died.
• I tried to be a guerilla fighter, but I had terrible aim with my grenade launcher so I went to the movies and watched The Hobbit instead.
• I was Fox Mulder, investigating an alien case, and finally had a breakthrough -- it all comes down to clues hidden in toilet paper! Of course! 

Thanks to Larium, I never have a dull night's sleep anymore. Some of the things I've dreamt are seriously strange, but I'm just glad that I don't have any of the other side effects -- moodiness, depression, loss of hair (!)... I can deal with weird dreams. If my hair starts to fall out, I'll get back to you.

My Fake Boyfriend Will Beat You Up!

It's no secret that I look a little different from your average Mozambican. For some reason that I have yet to fathom, some people here, especially men and children, think it's totally acceptable to randomly shout things at me when I'm walking around. Now, don't get me wrong, the vast majority of the population is incredibly kind, and they are genuinely curious about who I am and what I am doing here. But there's always that handful of people who just want to heckle me.

Top Things People Shout at Me on the Street

• Hey, Muzungu! (Chinynaja) or Hey, Branca! (Portuguese)
• Hello, Sister! ("ELLO, SEE-STA!")
• Good morning, Teacher! ("GOO-MOH-NEEN, TEE-SHA!")
• How are you? ("HAWAYU!")
• What is your name! ("WAH-TISS-YOH-NEHM?")
• TSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS! (Obnoxious hissing sound used to get attention and for cat-calling.)
• I love you! ("AY-LAF-YU!")
• You look like you work for Peace Corps! (Pronounced: "PISS-CORPSE")

OK, that last one only happened once. But it was unexpected and kind of funny. The rest of these I hear every couple of minutes anytime I leave the safehaven of my village.

Single white women especially get a lot of attention. Most of it is harmless, but sometimes find yourself in one of these conversations, like I did a few days ago:

MOZAMBICAN: Hey White, do you want to marry me?
ME: No, thank you.
MOZAMBICAN: Why not? I would make a great husband. And I would love to marry a White.
ME: I don't know you.
MOZAMBICAN: So you'll only marry another white person?
ME: No, but I don't marry complete strangers who only ask me because I'm white.
MOZAMBICAN: That's very shallow of you. It would be good for a pretty white girl like you to marry a  nice black Mozambican, like me.

At this point, I usually bust out the boyfriend-line.

ME: Oh, well, I'm sorry, but I have a boyfriend back in America. He is waiting for me, and he would be very angry if he knew you kept asking me to marry you.
MOZAMBICAN: You have a boyfriend? In America?
ME: Yes.
MOZAMBICAN: Well, that's OK, you need someone to tide you over until you go back. Two years is a long time.
ME: No, thank you.
MOZAMBICAN: Your boyfriend is probably sleeping around on the side while you're gone, so it's OK if you have a few of my children while you're here.
ME: No, my boyfriend is big and strong and very jealous. I have to go now or he will be angry.

Usually, they will stop asking at this point, or I just stop responding. The fake boyfriend is a great defense. And, thanks to Rachel, I even have a picture of us.

This is Tom. He is tall, strong, and jealous. He is coming to visit me soon and would be so very angry if he found out I had been flirting with any Mozambican men.

Snazzy, right? 100% Photoshopped! Did you notice Rice University in the background? Nice touch!

This guy's name actually is Tom. He's Tom Hiddleston, an English actor best known for his portrayal of Loki. His face was on Cherry Coke cans for a while. But there's no Cherry Coke here, and I highly doubt that the average Mozambican has seen Thor, the Avengers, or War Horse, so I can make stuff up about him to my hearts content.

His favorite color is orange. We met at university. He has three siblings. He is allergic to pineapple.

This is kind of fun!

I figure I can change up the facts every time I use him, customized for the particular situation and mood I'm in. I'll call it the Mix and Match Boyfriend. (Patent Pending)

Tom came in handy a few days ago, when I had a Major Creeper Incident. Here's what happened:

The Major Creeper Incident

I had returned from the city a few hours ago, and was lazing about on my bed, thinking that I should eventually start thinking about commencing to begin cooking dinner. From outside the window, I hear a noise, but, as there are always goats or children or stray dogs wandering around, I don't think much of it. Then I hear the tell-tale "Com licença!" that signals a visitor at the door. I go to the front door, and there's no one there. So I open the back door and there is a man.

"Hello," he says in English, his breath smelling of beer, "How are you?"

"Estou bem, obrigada." I say, as I have been trying to get in the habit of speaking Portuguese with the people in my village. I figure that this is probably one of my neighbors that I haven't met yet.

"Do you speak English? I don't speak Portuguese."

Um, what? Clearly not a neighbor. I ask who he is.

"I'm a truck driver from Zimbabwe. My truck broke down over there, and I'm stuck in this town tonight. I saw you get off the chapa earlier and I wondered what such a pretty white girl was doing in the middle of the Mozambican bush. So I followed you home to see where you live."

Creepy much!? I explain to him curtly that I'm an English teacher and I have a lot of work to finish.

"Oh, but I bought some spaghetti and some tuna. You should make dinner for me. I would love to have a beautiful white woman cook for me. I will stay here tonight."

MAJOR CREEPER ALERT! I tell him he can't stay here and he needs to go away right now.

"But you need some companionship! You are so beautiful and I can't imagine what it's like for you, living here amongst all these animals in this God-forsaken country."

By the way he said it, I don't think the "animals" he is referring to are the ducks and goats.

At this point, I'm really ticked off, and more than a little offended, and I tell him to get off of my property THIS INSTANT. He reluctantly wanders away, but I see him watching from afar for another half hour or so before leaving entirely.

Needless to say, I locked my doors VERY carefully that night. And I breathed a sigh of relief the next morning when his truck pulled out of our town.

It really sucks that people like this man exist. And it is unfortunate that so many people still treat women like this. I think I speak for a lot of women when I say I don't understand. It may seem "harmless" for a man to whistle at a woman as she walks down the street -- maybe he thinks he's paying her a compliment -- but it usually just gives her the creeps and makes her feel unsafe. I'm not actually sure which is better -- thinking that my creepy visitor was trying to harass me, or come to terms with the fact that he legitimately believed that, just because I am a woman I'm obligated to make him dinner -- and just because I'm white I will sleep with him.

These are the times when I have to close my eyes, breathe deeply, count to ten and remind myself that only a very small portion of the population is like that creep. On the whole, the Mozambicans I've interacted with are incredibly generous, friendly, open and inviting -- I'm not going to let a few bad apples (Zimbabwean or otherwise) taint that for me.

... but if that man ever comes back, I won't stop Poppy from mauling him. Just saying.

Open Letter to Mozambican Goats

 Dear Goat Community,

I used to be a big fan of yours. I thought you were all super cute, and all I wanted was a pet goat. I was going to name it Chifres -- 'horns' in Portuguese.

"But Mana Helena, ALL goats have horns. That name makes no sense," a Mozambican said, "Why would you distinguish your goat with something that every goat has? That would be like calling a dog Tail, or a cow Udder."

Look, whatever, ok!? I wanted a goat, and I was going to name it Chifres. Chifres and I would frolic together daily under the warm African sun.

But now?

I. HATE. YOU. ALL.

You are everywhere, all the time! You eat everything, and poop on all surfaces. In the morning, I wake up to your constant bleating. "BAAAAAAAH. BAAAAAH. BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" 4 a.m., 5 a.m., 6 a.m... do you have nothing better to do all day!? Shut up, I'm trying to sleep!

After being woken by your chorus of torture, I step outside to the lovely smell of your feces. Most days, the porch that I painstakingly swept and mopped the day before looks like this:

Poppy says, "Yum, snacktime!"

At first, I thought "Well, yeah, goats are super annoying, but at least I get goat cheese, right?" WRONG. Apparently, you are not the right type of goat to produce goat cheese. Thanks for ruining my Dairy Master Plan.

That's not all. You eat my dog's food when I'm not looking. You sneak into my house when I doze off with the door open. You pee on the door at night and pee seeps in under the door. You smell terrible. You track mud everywhere. And you sound like screaming children. I heard enough screaming children for a lifetime whilst working at a pre-school, OK, goats? At least my pre-schoolers were adorable and had winning personalities. What do you have to offer? Nothing!

So here's the deal. You need to step it up, goats. You need to get your act together. Stop pooping all over the place. Stop waking me up at all hours. If this situation doesn't improve, I'm going to have to take some drastic measures.

Sincerely,

Professora Helena
Concerned Neighbor

P.S. If I ever get a cow, I'm totally naming it Udder.

P.P.S Ducks, watch out. You're next.



(Translated into Goat, this letter reads:
BAAAA. BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH. BAAAHBAHAAAHHHH. BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH. BAAH. BAAAH BAAAAAAAAHAAAAABAAA. BAA BAA BAAAH. BAAAAAAAH "Udder".)
Goat is clearly a much more efficient language than English.

New Year's Day

Wow, it's 2013 already -- what a strange thought. It seems like time stopped since I left the United States -- probably because I'm used to it getting colder in the winter and here it's just been getting hotter.

Szasha and I were originally going to spend NYE in Tete City, at a fancy party that we heard about from an ex-pat -- but changed our minds when we found out about the $300 cover charge. Also, the one family that was left in my village decided to spend NYE with their relatives in the city -- so even if I had wanted to leave, there wouldn't have been anyone around to feed Poppy. Thus, Szasha and I rang in the new year on my living room floor, watching Bridget Jones' Diary and eating pasta. We've been getting better at dealing with the heat, but it was so hot this time that we went to new extremes to keep cool.

Yup, we're sitting in buckets. Little bucket for the feet, big bucket for the rear. Periodically pouring water on your head feels awesome. We sat like this and watched a movie.

Midnight came and went -- Szasha and I clinked glasses and that was that. 2013. I thought back to exactly one year ago, when I rang in the New Year in a taxi headed for a night out in downtown Houston with my best friend -- granted, that evening ended in Rachel and I waist deep in a gutter in the middle of the night, searching for a lost iPhone, so I can't definitively say which year was better.

So much has happened in the past year -- I went back to Sweden, quit my job at the elementary school in Houston, moved away from Houston, moved back in with my parents in San Antonio, got a theater job in New Braunfels, joined the Peace Corps... it's been a busy year, and somehow I don't think this coming year is going to be any less busy. Not just for me -- several of my friends are starting new jobs, getting married, moving... everyone's life is hectic.

Thankfully, I won't be moving this year -- I'll be in Mavudzi-Ponte all year. Next year, too. It's always difficult for me to wrap my head around the length of Peace Corps service: 27 months. A few days ago was our three-month mark of being in Mozambique. Sometimes it seems like an eternity and sometimes it seems like it's going to finish in the blink of an eye. To help me visualize (and also because I was bored) I made this paper chain, with each link representing one month of service left -- so right now, it's 24 links long.

Cool, huh? I got this idea from my friend Jamie. The chain hangs by my window.

As for the coming year, here are my resolutions:

• Don't suck as a teacher
• Learn to play my new guitar
• Don't screw up
• Stay positive
• Stay sane
• Stay cool

My new guitar. I carried it home sitting in an open pickup truck on top of sack of coal.

Happy New Year!