Bye Namaacha, time to head north!

On a Tuesday morning, December 2nd, all of us in Moz group 23 left our host families and training site in Namaacha to head out and start our actual Peace Corps service. There are a lot of little details about Namaacha that never made it into any previous blog posts, so here's a variety of some last short glimpses:

That random guy's pet monkey

One of the AWESOME GIANT PURPLE TREES of Namaacha, which I have finally learned is called a jacaranda tree

These trees, just popping up in the middle of all the other normal green trees, always made me feel like they come from some kind of psychedelic magical candy land or something.

SERIOUSLY AWESOME

That time someone threw the football in the abandoned, potentially-parasite-infected pool next to the science teachers' hub, and creative attempts were made to retrieve it...

Going outside to the casa de banho to take a bath on a rainy day

A fruit found in Namaacha called an ata, or sugar apple

The inside of an ata has seeds covered in sweet white soft flesh

Namaacha also has litchis... many, many litchis

Lichis!!! :D

Portuguese language class under the litchi trees 

Fish-filled chamusas at one of the local barracas, always popular at the end of a full day of training 

At Xavier's, the most frequented barraca to meet at the end of the day

My daily view on the walk back home after training sessions

But training in Namaacha didn't last forever, and at the end of nine weeks we left for the capital of Maputo to finish training and swear-in as official Peace Corps Volunteers. On my last morning, my mãe made a special going-away breakfast.

Mãe with the big breakfast she made

Heck yeah french fries and eggs

Then I dressed up in my custom-made capulana dress, left the house for the last time, and left for Maputo on a chapa (mini-bus/van). The swear-in ceremony took place at the U.S. ambassador's house, an absolutely beautiful place right near the ocean. First there were a lot of speeches, until finally we all held up our right hands and swore to support and defend the U.S. Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic, and faithfully discharge our duties in the Peace Corps. This is actually the same oath taken by the President. Rock on.

Before the ceremony, at the ambassador's house 

Taking pictures on stage after the ceremony

Finally a real PCV... time to head north to site!

Taking it to Tete

Peace Corps pre-service training in Mozambique is ten weeks long. It can get pretty monotonous, with lectures and lessons day in, day out, starting to get fed up with the constraints of host family life, and easy to forget why we're actually here. So, for week 6, as sort of a mid-term break, we got to go on site visits! Each of us trainees, typically in pairs, got to visit a current Peace Corps volunteer's site in Mozambique for about three days, to see a bit of what daily life is actually like.

By happy coincidence (or possibly by someone on the Peace Corps staff who likes name-puns a little too much... ;) ), I got to visit the village of Mavudzi-Ponte in the province of Tete, where volunteers Helen and Laura live. I'd been following Helen's blog for the past half-year, so upon finding out that Mavudzi was actually, seriously, the site I was going to get to visit, I'll admit I freaked out a little. Just a little.

Oh and also, because Moz is such a huge country, me and the five other trainees visiting Tete province got to take a plane there. And let me just say that LAM, Mozambique's airline, has infinitely better airplane food and service than any average American flight.

Namaacha to Tete (though we flew out of Maputo)

To Tete we go!

LAM-WICH FOR THE WIN and also an orange-muffin. All for just a two-hour flight.

First views of the mountains in Tete

After arriving at the airport (to like 100 degree weather- Tete is infamous for being Mozambique's hottest province), we went to an air-conditioned café in the capital Tete City for lunch, where we met a group of about ten other volunteers from the area, from both health and education sectors. Annie (my travel buddy who I would be site-visiting with) and I then left with Helen and Laura to get a ride on an open-backed truck to Mavudzi, only 45 minutes from Tete City.

When we arrived in the quiet town of Mavudzi-Ponte and came to Helen and Laura's abode on the secondary school teachers' complex, there was immediately a stream of toddlers and kids streaming through the house, and other teachers stopping by to say hi. They were all very friendly and welcoming. Well, except for the one little boy who literally screamed in terror at the sight of Annie and me and ran for his mother, who laughed and patted him reassuringly. "But he doesn't do that around me anymore!" Laura exclaimed, "I thought he'd gotten used to white people!" But the sudden appearance of two MORE new white faces must have just been too much ;)

Arrived in Mavudzi-Ponte!

The teacher's complex, with long buildings divided into housing sections

Most importantly though, we made mac n' cheese for dinner. With REAL CHEESE. After five weeks of xima, rice, bread, bony fish, and a distinct LACK of real cheese, this meal was amazing beyond words :)

REAL CHEESE

Annie, Helen, and Laura with our mac n' cheese dinner

It also quickly became apparent that Laura and Helen had essentially received their mini-me's as site visitors. Both Laura and Annie went to school in Colorado, had lived in Denmark, along with other similar interests. And Helen and I had the obvious name thing (and we both go by Helena in Portuguese here), have vaguely similar features (in Mozambique, two people with blond hair and glasses are pretty much considered to look the same) and both of us are double-citizens of a German-speaking country. So needless to say, we all had plenty to talk about!

The next morning, Annie and I got the full tour of town. Helen and Laura showed us the secondary school where they both teach English, and introduced us to the director. Then, on one end of the school building we got to see the sweet map mural they painted with a group of students. It was part of a health awareness project- the map shows the percentage of HIV prevalence in each country.

Laura and Helen with their badass map

After seeing the school, we continued towards the health clinic. And on the way their were THESE AWESOME ORANGE TREES.

ORANGE TREE

At the clinic, which Laura knew pretty well since she used to volunteer there, we got to see all the different parts of the clinic, from the maternity ward to the lab where they carry out the HIV tests. On this particular day there were a lot of people there to get prophylaxis medicine for something called elephantiasis, which is when a person's limbs literally swell to insanely gigantic proportions. 

On the way to the clinic

After the clinic, we went walked back along the road to check out Mavudzi's little market, and stop at the barraca for a cold drink because, as we later learned, it was in fact 110 degrees Fahrenheit that day. I have never appreciated a cold refresco so much in my life. 

At the barraca, taking a break from our walk

Back at the house, Annie and I spent the afternoon laying on the floor underneath two fans because it was too hot to think about doing anything else, and Helen and Laura alternated between doing the same, and going to school to proctor final exams. The next morning, the wonderful food parade continued as we had pancakes for breakfast!

Just look at them stacked pancakes

Then, since this second day was a little cooler out, we went on a hike by the river.

Walking through a neighborhood of houses to get to the river

It was the end of the dry season, so the river (on the left) was pretty low at the moment.

View of the mountains from the river

It also turned out that Mavudzi is home to an EPICALLY giant baobab tree (think Rafiki's tree from the Lion King), which we also saw on our hike. SEE THE AWESOME:

Walking towards the baobab

CRAZY HUGE TREE with me for scale

Seriously though

That night, we were also treated to a spectacular sunset, as viewed from Helen and Laura's front door.

Sun sinking into the mountains

On our third and final morning in Mavudzi, we left to spend the day in Tete City, to tour a bit and do some shopping before leaving for our flight back to Maputo early the next morning. Since space at the hotel was tight, we actually stayed with a couple of Laura and Helen's expat friends, a couple from Zimbabwe. They graciously invited us for dinner, and we had a good time chatting and hearing their stories of how they came to Tete after having to leave their farm back home. They were great hosts!

At dinner with Helen and Laura's friends

Finally, the next morning it was time to head out. Good times were had by all, but us trainees still had the second half of training in Namaacha to get through. Tete was a great place, I hope I get to visit again to see more of it someday!

One last view of Tete

Heading to the airport on a tuk-tuk; a tiny three-wheeled taxi common to some cities in Moz

Why Moz Church Is Better Than Yours ;)

On my third Sunday of homestay, I went with my mãe and host-sister Teresa to the Igreja Evangelica Assembleia de Deus, aka Assembly of God Evangelical Church in Namaacha.

At the evangelical church in Namaacha. SO MANY PRETTY CLOTHES

I'd been wanting to go to a church service here, to see what it was like. And it was FREAKING AWESOME.

So in the States, I've been to plenty of standard Lutheran church services, where everybody sits and listens and reads in monotone and there's some singing, but nobody gets too excited. We're Scandinavian, after all. And I know from other volunteers in my group that there's churches like that in Mozambique too. But not THIS church.

The vast majority of the Sunday service at the Igreja Evangelica consisted of singing, short enthusiastic sermons, followed by MORE AWESOME SINGING. And dancing. The service I went to was mostly in the local language of Changana, but some announcements were in (really fast) Portuguese. The video below sums up the general vibe:

*Fun fact: The lady with the big green headwrap facing the congregation in front of the window is my host-great-aunt, and also my seamstress who I get my local capulana clothes made from.

There were also several groups or choirs who would stand at the back of the room and perform songs on their own. Sorry these next videos aren't as long, because it was SUPER AWKWARD to be filming these since everyone else in the room stayed facing forward and I was the only one peaking back to look at the singers.

At one point, there were announcements, followed by introductions where visitors could stand up and introduce ourselves. There were about four other Peace Corps volunteers in attendance with their host families as well, and we each stood up, said our names and the host families we belong to, and that we're here as volunteers for the Peace Corps. Turns out that going to church here is a really good social move, because since then I've had several random people and street vendors greet me because they remembered me from when I introduced myself at that one church service.  

Then came the time for the offering, which at the churches I've been to in the U.S., they usually just pass back a tray that people drop their money into. But here, they kept the tray up front, and the people had to walk up to drop their donation in, forming a line down the aisles. But the people in line didn't just walk, of course. During the entire offering time, the whole congregation was singing, and the people in line danced and sashayed their way to the front. Here I tried to catch on video some of the wonderfully jolly people bouncing down the aisle on my left:

But this didn't go down just once! After the first round of donations were given and the singing died down, one guy hopped back down onto the floor and started up the singing and dancing all over again, and again everybody got up to give more money. And this whole process repeated itself at least another four times, for nearly an hour, of people getting up, boogying on down to the front to drop in their money, boogying back to their seats, then doing it all over again. Later, I found out that the church is currently raising money to finish the construction of their building, so maybe the donation process doesn't always go on that long, but I don't know. 

The last forty-five minutes or so of the service dialed back the energy a bit and it was a bit more boring, with just a single guy giving a long sermon. By that point the service had already gone on for three-and-a-half hours so it was pretty tiring, but luckily I could spend that time admiring the adorable baby that some mães were passing back and forth in the row in front of me, and of course all the gloriously chique clothes everyone had on. Like seriously, most Mozambicans already dress up way more than we do on regular days, so when Sunday comes around they pull out all the stops, with custom-made capulana (the name for various forms of colorful fabric here) clothing galore. SO MANY COLORS. Although some, like my host family, choose to wear plain white to church, which is also very pretty. You won't catch me doing that though- WAY to much trouble when everything here is hand-washed.

Teresa, me (in a capulana dress), and mãe back home after church

Overall, it was pretty awesome and a good way to see more of the community. A Igreja Evangelica Assembleia de Deus Namaacha knows how to party!

How To Drink Tea In Moz

Tea is a big deal in Mozambique. To tomar chá is one of the most important parts of the day, and over the past several weeks with my host family, several of the following rules on how to prepare and drink tea have become apparent to me:

1. When Mozambicans say "chá", they're not necessarily talking about actual tea, but any kind of hot beverage. For the first several weeks, for my daily chá my family mostly had me drinking a kind of hot chocolate called Milo, which I actually recognized from my time in Ghana two years ago. I guess both west and east African kids (and my friend Mollie) like their Milo.

Apparently this counts as tea

2. If you are drinking traditional bagged tea, only steep the bag for 10 seconds. Any longer is just weird- why would you do that?

3. Make sure you add at least three heaping tablespoons, or fill at least 1/8th the volume of your cup with sugar. Otherwise, it's not real tea- you may as well be drinking water.

4. When you drink it, make sure the water's hot enough to burn your mouth, or else (once again) it's not real tea, you may as well be drinking water.

5. ALWAYS eat bread with your tea, even if you've just finished eating a big meal and have already eaten three large rolls of bread. On rare occasions, biscuit cookies might be an acceptable substitute. Because to drink tea by itself is, of course, completely and utterly WRONG. And just plain weird.

6. And vice versa, you should always drink tea with your breakfast. You should never leave the house without having had any tea (and don't forget the bread!).

7. If you don't follow any of the rules above, your host family will regularly give you concerned and/or sympathetic looks and probably wonder how any Americans can function as working adults if they don't even know how to drink tea.

Enjoy!

SITE ANNOUNCEMENT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Today was probably the most nerve-wracking day of all of training- the day all of us in group Moz 23 (the 23rd group to serve in Mozambique) found out where in the country we'll carrying out our Peace Corps service for the next two years. And Mozambique is such a huge country (it's over a two-and-a-half-hour plane ride from the north end of the country to the south- roughly the equivalent distance of Boston to Miami), where we (and the good friends we've made in training) are placed really does make a big difference in terms of where we can travel and who we can visit during our time here. And of course all sites vary widely in their climate, community size, and landscapes- from large cities to small villages, from hot to cold, from beach to plains to mountains. And until today, most of us in my training group had absolutely no idea where we, or our friends, would end up.

Well, now I am ecstatic to be able to say I will be spending the next two years living in the village of Nauela, teaching high school biology in the central province of Zambézia!

It's actually a bit farther north... but I was too lazy to fix the image.

I don't know much about Nauela yet, since all I was actually given on paper was the name of the town, and a dot on the map to tell me where it is. For site announcements, the Peace Corps staff drew a map of Mozambique and the provinces on the floor of the basketball court near our training lecture hall. 

It's hard to see, but the map of Mozambique is drawn in chalk on the far side of the court.

All 55 of us stood in a row along the side of the court as staff handed us the envelopes containing our site placement info, though we weren't supposed to open them yet. As we waited for them all to be handed out, we started trying to feel up each others envelopes. "Oh, yours is thin, you must be opening a site!!!" said Tyler next to me. We'd been told that those of us replacing volunteers would receive reports and advice from the previous volunteers in our envelopes, while people going to new sites (where no volunteers have previously worked) would have to wait for more detailed info. I felt of thrill of excitement. I didn't mind too much either way, but I did think it would be cool to establish a first-time Peace Corps site. Either way, at least I finally wouldn't have to wait much longer to find out!

Finally, after significant buildup of tension, the staff let us open our envelopes. I was thrilled to see I was in Zambézia, since I'd secretly been hoping for a location in one of the central provinces. And since I didn't recognize Nauela as the name of any big cities, I knew I'd probably gotten my wish for a smaller town. I walked out to stand on my place on the map, and as everyone else went to stand in their spots as well, it was surreal to finally see everyone's final site locations, and to see who else would be near me. I feel pretty lucky in that the five other volunteers in my group going to Zambézia are all awesome people, and since I'm in the northern part of the province I'll be "close" to several Nampula volunteers as well. And I'll be within roughly 150 miles of the Malawi border!

Since my envelope didn't have any other information, I found Gelane, our education director for the north, and interrogated him about my site. He confirmed that it's a pretty small town/village, about an hour-and-a-half to the nearest larger city, Alto Mólocuè. He admitted that transportation will be difficult- the only option for getting to and from Nauela will be open-backed trucks. The house will have no running water, but I might have electricity, since apparently they're actually in the process of building a new house on the teachers' compound for me, and they're trying to get it wired up. He even mentioned they might install solar panels...? We'll see. And it turns out that Nauela isn't actually a new site- they have had education volunteers there for several years, and in fact, I'll have a sitemate, an English teacher named Gabriella, who is from a previous year of volunteers who switched from her original site to move to Nauela a few months ago. It'll be nice to have someone to share the experience with!

Gelane also mentioned that I'll have a "foster family" of sorts- they're simply a local family who've unofficially taken on the role of helping out the volunteers in Nauela, and making it a little easier to integrate into the village life. I then asked about the possibility of having a vegetable garden near the house, and he mentioned the best way to do that would possibly be to help my foster family with their garden, since they already have a large one. So we'll see about that! :) 

Last but not least, from what I've heard, Nauela is supposed to be in beautiful rolling-hills-mountainous-country, which pretty much sounds like what I've spent years dreaming my Peace Corps site would be like. So, um, YES THAT IS AWESOME :D

I definitely feel like I lucked out- of course, I'll find out first-hand how it is in a couple of weeks when I arrive, but so far I'm feeling great!

***

Actually, there is one last fun fact about my site- it's within a couple hours' of the two cities where my host sister and aunt (my mãe Olympia's daughter and sister) live! Given how huge Mozambique is, and that Zambézia is the only place outside of Maputo where my mãe has relatives, the fact that I've now been placed this close to 'family' is an insane coincidence. I can't wait to meet them!

Happy Birthday in Moz!

So back in October, I celebrated my birthday in Mozambique for the first time. I initially didn't want to make it a big deal, so I didn't tell anyone, either my host family or other Peace Corps trainees, until the day before. Later I realized that was a stupid move, especially regarding my host family, because of course even with the short notice they wanted to have a celebration. Which, turned out pretty awesome.

Table set for birthday dinner!

My mãe cooked a special Portuguese dish with eggplant and other stuff in it, a deliciously grilled chicken, and of course a cake! The cake was made with corn flour, so it was sort of a cornbread-type thing. And, as always for special occasions, orange Fanta in champagne glasses :)

Eggplant-dish with chicken and rice

Left to right: Chaide, Teresa, Mundo, and mãe Olympia. The lighting makes them all look a bit demonic ;)

I'd probably look demonic too if I didn't have a knack for blinking at the wrong time

Before starting dinner, there were several birthday traditions to be observed. I have no idea if these things are Mozambican or just stuff my family made up, or whatever. Anyway, first my mãe cut out a single 'corner' of the cake, and split it up into bite-sized pieces so that my host-brother Chaide and I each speared a piece on our forks. Then, we linked arms and each ate our piece. We did a similar thing with our drinks. My mãe poured us each some Fanta, and Chaide and I linked arms to drink as well.

The traditional 'corner' of cake that I shared with Chaide

Drinking our champagne Fanta with linked arms

Finally, my mãe poured Fanta for everyone, and made a toast. She had us all hold our glasses para esquerda (to the left), para direita (to the right), para baixo (down), para cima (up), and finally, to drink. Last but not least, my mãe had a small gift for me- a lenço, or a piece of cloth to use as a headwrap. She knew that I'd been trying for weeks to get one to match a capulana dress I'd had made, so she had found one while traveling in the capital city that morning.

My mãe's gift of a lenço! :D

I feel so lucky to have such a great host family that made this day special. The other trainees in my group were also so great, making a card and also giving me CHOCOLATE cookies (seriously so awesome). Thanks all! :D