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.