FOOD

Whenever traveling to a foreign country, probably the number one question from the folks back home is... "so how's the food?" ;)

Well, my answer's pretty easy, because the food in Mozambique is... CARBS. CARBS AND CARBS AND MORE CARBS, all day every day, all the time CARBS. Yes.

Well okay, there is other food too, and most of it's actually pretty tasty. And Peace Corps tells our host families that we're required to have fruits and veggies every day. So I actually have a fairly balanced diet, apart from all the CARBS. But hey, that's what running is for, right? ;)

So here's an overview of some of the various foods I eat here, and the low-down on how some of them are prepared.

Getting the charcoal ready to cook

My host-family's indoor kitchen

***

Peanuts

So, peanut butter here isn't as common as in the U.S., but peanut powder is used a fair amount here in Namaacha in southern Mozambique. Ready-powdered peanuts are probably sold somewhere, but that stuff's expensive, so my host-family pounds the peanuts themselves.

Pounding peanuts. Use the force...

Sifting the pounded peanuts to re-pound the remaining large bits

Coconut Milk

So if you thought you knew what coconut milk was... you're probably wrong (At least, I was. And I choose to believe I'm not the only one. I refuse to hear otherwise.). It's not the watery liquid that you can drink right after you crack it open- called the coconut water. The milk is what you get after you scrape out the white flesh, squeeze it with your hands while pouring hot water over it, and filter it through a strainer. Then, it's often mixed with peanut powder and cooked with various types of meals, as explained below.

Coconut!

Scraping out the coconut meat

Squeezing out the coconut milk- the actual coconut flesh left over (left)  isn't used directly in meals

Fish
So... fish. It's really a really common meal in Namaacha- gutted and grilled whole. Or, thrown whole into a pot of boiling coconut milk/peanut mixture. I'm not the biggest fan of this meal, but since my mãe doesn't make me eat the heads it's not too bad, as long as I manage to get most of the bones out. I only dread this meal on days when I'm already feeling a bit queasy and not looking forward to spending so much time picking crunchy fish bones out of my teeth ;)

Gutting the fish- a common meal in Namaacha, grilled whole

Beans

Beans are pretty easy to get around here too, and I really like when my family makes it, with, diced carrots, garlic, and oil. 

Matapa/Couve

There's a common veggie meal here that seems to go by various names depending on the type of plant used- either matapa when it's cooked with cassava leaves, or with couve, a kale relative. It also has diced onion, sometimes garlic, and is all boiled together in the coconut milk/peanut sauce. I could do without the onions, but otherwise it's pretty good!

Xima

Xima is one of the largest staples of the Mozambican diet. The ingredients can vary throughout the country, but my family here usually makes it by boiling corn flour, and then leaving it to solidify into a thick consistency similar to stiff mashed potatoes or grits. Usually either xima or rice is eaten with every meal. My mãe told me that when she was a kid, she also liked eating xima warm before it solidified, when it would be more like what we'd think of as porridge-consistency. She had me try some, with some sugar sprinkled on top. I actually liked it a lot- like a Mozambican cream-of-wheat :)

Couve with xima

Rice

Rice is... well, rice. Y'all know what it is. I eat it pretty much every day, unless I'm eating xima instead. 

Pasta

One of my favorite comfort-food meals is spaghetti- here we usually make it with some diced carrots and salt. No weird stuff. Though my family loves eating it with TONS of bread. Like I said, CARBS...

Cassava

Cassava, or mandioca, is also very common here. Slightly more dense and stringy than potatoes, cassava can be mashed or fried, or anything else you can think of. Mozambicans especially like their fried stuff.

Fried cassava chunks

Bread

I didn't really expect it, but at least here in Namaacha, there's really good bread. White bread, anyway- I haven't seen any wheat bread yet. It gets baked fresh every day at various places in town, and it's what I usually have for breakfast every day, with butter or peanut butter (which is expensive but since my host family gets compensated quite a bit for hosting a volunteer, they bought it as a special thing. Occasionally if I get up early enough, I'll make a fried egg to go with it (with the bread, not the peanut butter) because EGGS ARE AMAZING.

Fresh bread roll for breakfast

WITH FRIED EGGS AND BUTTER

Cake (and Coffee)

So cake, or bolo, does exist here as well, though it's often not as sweet as in the U.S. One afternoon when I had gotten off class early, I helped my mãe make bolo, and as a treat she also brought out some real coffee to drink with it. I'm not usually a coffee drinker, but my mãe insisted on my having some. It had been given to her by a previous volunteer who brought it from the States, since real coffee is rare and/or expensive here. So I loaded it up with sugar, and together with the cake it was pretty good! My Austrian side of the family will be so proud. Kaffee und kuchen in Mozambique :)

Special day- afternoon coffee and cake!

Mãe sitting at her barraca with cake

Sugarcane

So look, I'm from the Midwest, and therefore all this tropical food is super exciting and exotic to me. One day when we were sitting outside next to the barraca, my mãe brought over this big plant stalk, started cutting the center into chunks, and chewing on them, just like that. I thought that was kind of weird, since it didn't look like it tasted all that great. It was a pretty tough, woody-looking plant. But then my mãe explained that it was cana doce- or sugarcane. "You can just eat it?" I asked. I'd always assumed that raw sugarcane didn't actually taste sweet- I figured it had a higher sugar content than other plants, but still had to be processed and so on in order to extract the sugar in high quantities. But mãe cut me some chunks, and DUDE THIS PLANT IS THE COOLEST THING EVER. You just chew on it and suck out the sugar. My mãe has a bunch growing in the garden out back, though they have to be carefully guarded because people will steal them. Uh, yeah I WOULD (just kidding...). Apparently the stalks are sometimes sold at the market, though they can be pricey. 

Sugar cane!

A chunk of the sugar cane stem- just chew on it like candy

Masala
Okay, so you know in The Lion King movie, when Rafiki cracks open this fruit and spreads the juice on baby Simba's forehead? That fruit is a masala, which also goes by about a million other names, but that's what it's called in Mozambique. It's got a hard green shell, which you crack open and the inside is full of hard seeds covered in brown slimy goo. The brown goo is the part you eat, and it's actually delicious, like sweet apple pie. It's kind of annoying to eat though, because you don't get much, and you have to eat around all the seeds. STILL COOL THOUGH.

Masala

Chicken
Apart from fish, the other most common type of meat here is chicken. Fresh chicken. I won't say too much more here, because this is a story which needs its own post. Needless to say, though, it concerns certain rites of passage for volunteers here in Mozambique... and some look forward to it more than others. I'll get to that story as soon as I can :)

Host Family & The Training Life

Peace Corps training in Mozambique is only a couple months long- but within this time we’re expected to become relatively competent Portuguese speakers and know how to teach classrooms of upwards of 40 to 80 students, when most of us never spoke Portuguese or had any formal classroom teaching experience before coming here. So, our days are usually long- from 7:30am to 5:30pm- and in the evenings we have homework to do, some household chores (like heating bathwater over a charcoal fire), and we’re expected to spend time hanging out with our host families.

Luckily, I pretty much won the host family lottery. My mãe is incredibly patient and kind, but also gives me my space, takes the time to try explaining words I don't know, lets me help around the house and do things on my own, and doesn’t force food down my throat the way some of the mães around here like to do because they want to make sure we are very well fed. Also, my family here has hosted eight volunteers by now, so they’re already familiar with most American peculiarities- like how we enjoy running for exercise and that we don’t like to eat fish heads (I was even more fervently grateful for this after talking to another volunteer whose family gave him a whole plateful of fish heads for dinner several nights in a row). I also never have trouble finding my mãe if I need her during the day, because she works every day selling various snacks and goods in a small barraca right in front of our house. 

My mãe Olympia, sifting pounded peanuts. The bush to the right is her favorite because of how nice it smells in bloom.  

My pai, who works as a secondary school history and geography teacher during the day, is also very friendly and welcoming. Then there’s my three siblings, starting with Chaide, who’s about to turn 15. He’s pretty chill, always willing to help me out with anything, and we’ve had some good times tutoring each other on English/Portuguese. He’s a big fan of just flipping through my Portuguese dictionary and grammar books, just looking for new English words and phrases. 

Chaide, with my guitar. He likes trying it out every once in a while, when Teresa and Mundo aren't around to fight to play it themselves ;)

My 8-year-old sister Teresa can be your typically annoying kid sister, especially when I’m trying to get homework done and all she wants to know is why I won’t play/dance/passear with her, or let her braid my hair. When I do have the time to hang out though, we’ve had some good times doing all of the aforementioned things, often with my 5-year-old brother Mundo along as well. That little boy has got some wicked dance moves. He’s also gotten in the habit recently of tackling me with a hug when I come home at the end of the day. This is partly because he can then transition from hugging to grabbing my arms and hanging off me like a monkey, of course, because that’s what every little kid who ever existed has wanted to pretend they are. I’m usually cool with it, mostly because it’s absolutely adorable.

Teresa and Mundo

Though clearly Mundo is not the only one who enjoys the monkey game.

I live in a neighborhood of Namaacha called Bairro A, which is where all the chemistry education volunteers live, about 15 of us within eight minute walks of each other. My house is very nice and actually sits on a pretty big piece of property, with a large backyard and even a vegetable garden in the back.

The view from the street of my mãe's barraca where she sells her goods, with the house behind it.

From the previous picture, if it were possible to walk straight ahead through the barraca you would come out on the other side here, facing the backyard. The iron-rod entryway on the right leads into the house door.

This is standing in the backyard in front of the bathhouse and looking back at the house. The barraca is to the right of the pink-painted wall. The window in the pink wall is my room. 

Looking inside through the front door is the dining table and living room in the back. My room is through a door just to the right, and the kitchen is through the door off to the left. 

Every day I leave the house with my backpack, and a packet of crackers with a juice box for a snack. In fact, nearly all 55 volunteers receive this same snack every day. If there's any clearer indication of the fact that Peace Corps training is like a combination of summer camp and being in kindergarten again, I don't know what it is. Either way, the snack's not optional. One day after I'd forgotten to take my juice box with me (the greatest of all possible tragedies- those things are actually pretty great), I was already several hundred yards away from the house when my mãe sent Teresa running after me to hand me my juice.

Training varies each day- sometimes we have small-group language sessions for a couple hours at one person's host family house, followed by tech sessions at the Peace Corps science hub with the other chemistry and biology education volunteers (the English and Math people have separate sessions from us those days). Usually, I walk home for lunch. Once a week, all 55 volunteers gather together for all-day info sessions at the lecture hall of IFP, the teacher-training institute. On these days, our host families bring our lunches to us in various forms of adorable picnic baskets.

My Portuguese language group and our teacher, at the science hub.

My "picnic" lunch for IFP days.

Lunchtime at IFP

My lunch is usually either rice or pasta with some kind of meat, salad, and a piece of fruit. I've probably got a more balanced diet now than I've had in years. 

As I write this, we're coming up on week five of training already, and it's insane to think we've already been here that long. Next week we already have all our mid-training assessments- which means about fifty million essays and quizzes, presenting a 30-minute chemistry lesson plan, and our Portuguese language interviews which will determine just how much more we need to improve language-wise before the end of training in another five weeks.

The nice part though is that during week six, we get to go on site visits! Each of us, either individually or in pairs, will get to go stay with a current volunteer (or volunteers) in another part of the country to see what day-to-day life at a site is like. I've just found out that I will be visiting the province of Tete, in the central region (Namaacha, where I'm at now, is in the south)! Even more exciting, I'll get to fly there, since Mozambique is so crazy big. Tete is the hottest region in the country, so we'll see how that goes. I've gotten so used to the nice cooler weather here in Namaacha :)

I'll be trying to catch up on all my planned blog posts before site visit time, so stay tuned- I haven't even gotten to the fun stuff yet :) Til next time!

"Let's go find the world!"

After our first night in Namaacha, we had a full day of Peace Corps info sessions at the IFP campus, i.e. the local teacher-training college, which has an indoor lecture hall big enough for our whole 50+ group. One of the most memorable sessions was given by one of the medical officers on the importance of personal hygiene. In a list of the benefits of bathing, he was especially enthusiastic about the last bullet point: Bathing is fun, relaxing, and romantic! When pressed for details, he elaborated “Well, you know, you are standing in a dark space, without clothes on, and you are caressing yourself…”

The lecture hall at IFP where we go once a week for large-group info sessions. This picture is, fittingly enough, from a skit one group did on innovative solutions to the most common bucket-bath issues.

Later, during lunch, a group of volunteers stood around exchanging stories about their personal shower situation at their host-family home.

“So… my bathhouse doesn’t have a roof, what am I supposed to do if it rains?”

“Yeah, my little brothers stole my soap last night to play with and I’m not sure I wanna use it anymore…”

“The door to our bathroom is just this sheet that blows in the wind, so while taking my bath last night I kept swaying back in forth with it so it would stay in front of me…”

“My shower room has a door, but the top part is open to the street where the kids play, so like, I can see them, and um, they can see me…”

“Dude, I’m standing on a dirt floor in Africa pouring cold water over myself in the dark- that is definitely NOT romantic!”

Personally, I don’t actually have much to complain about, since my casa de banho is a totally enclosed, roofed, lighted, and lockable concrete building that even has a (sometimes) flushable toilet. Plus my house has electricity, so I can usually use the electric kettle to make hot water in a jiffy. Posh Corps for the win, yo.

 ___

When I got home from training lectures around 5:30pm, my 8-year-old host-sister Teresa was already there (she goes to school from about noon til 5pm). I was barely able to get to my room and throw down my backpack before she grabbed my hand and dragged me outside to the backyard, chattering away. When I made it clear that I didn’t understand her, she repeated a single sentence a few times until I thought I got most of the words:

“Let’s go find the world!”

At least, that’s what I got out of it. My Portuguese was still pretty useless at that point.

“O mundo?” I asked for clarification. She nodded and continued dragging my arm along. That was the word I’d heard her use, and from Spanish I was pretty sure it meant “world”. I must have misheard though, because the phrase still made no sense. We reached the end of our yard, which looked into a neighboring one. A group of kids and toddlers were standing across the way. Teresa put both hands to her mouth (finally letting go of my own) and yelled, “MUNDO!!!”

One of the boys perked up, and started running out of the yard. Teresa led me around the side of the house, and the little boy met us there. Teresa skipped over to him, looked up at me, and said again with a grin, “Mundo!”

I walked over and pointed at the boy. “This is Mundo?” I asked.

The little boy giggled and Teresa smiled triumphantly. “Yes!”

Finally, I remembered that there had been another family member listed in the info I had received earlier about my host family. A couple more, actually- but it’s common for family members in Mozambique to move around often, so after last night I had just assumed that Chaide and Teresa were going to end up being the only ones of my host-siblings who actually still lived in the house. Teresa’s mom, for example, who was listed as my host-sister (since Teresa is technically my host-niece), actually lives in another province now. But I had completely forgotten about the other family member listed: a five-year-old cousin named Raimundo. Yep, I’m smart.

With the Mundo-mystery solved, and Teresa satisfied that we had met, Teresa and I continued to passear around the neighborhood. Passear-ing, i.e. walking around and talking to random people, is pretty much a national pastime in Mozambique, so I figured this was probably as good a time as any to start “practicing”. Teresa wanted to visit some other volunteers. Well, at that point I only knew the location of one other volunteer in the neighborhood- Dan, the volunteer who had come with Chaide and me when we’d walked to our language interviews the day before.

As we approached the gate in front of Dan’s house, I could already tell we were out of luck. The gate was locked and no one was around the front of the house. We called out a few times to see if anyone inside the house would hear, but there was no response. Oh well I thought, it’s getting dark soon anyway, and we should probably head home now. “Teresa, let’s- “

I stopped mid-sentence, because Teresa had already slipped her hand through the gate, unlocked it, and was now pushing it open and sliding through. She looked at me impatiently. “Come on!”

I hesitated. In the U.S., someone would have called the cops on us by now. But this wasn’t the U.S. Like I said, passear-ing and talking to your neighbors is one of the most important Mozambican activities- and sometimes, I guessed, it just might necessitate a little breaking-and-entering. So I stepped through the gate.

I followed Teresa up through the yard, and around the back of the house. Finally, we came to an open door leading into a dark living room area, where I could see some people sitting inside. Crap, I thought automatically, we should head back before they see us, they’re going to be furious we just opened their locked door and just walked into their house without asking and-

“Come in!” A friendly-faced woman smiled at us from just inside the door. Since I didn’t know any of these people, didn’t really speak their language, and I still half-expected them to yell at us and kick us out, I automatically waited for Teresa to take the lead. Then I realized that since I was the adult of the two of us, I should actually probably be the one to speak up.

“Uh… good afternoon!” I said. “Is, uh, is Dan here?”

“No” she responded, “He’s out walking”

“Okay,” I said, secretly slightly relieved, since it meant we could just go home now. HAHAHA THESE ARE THE NAÏVE THOUGHTS I HAVE. I opened my mouth to say goodbye.

“Sit!” she said.

“Oh no, that’s okay, we need to-“

“SIT!” she repeated.

I sat on the couch next to the tv, which was (as usual here) showing a Brazilian soap opera. Teresa sat next to me. Now that I was inside, I saw that in the armchair to my left was another person, a middle-aged guy, and in the other armchair was the most adorable little old granny- Dan’s host father (aka pai) and grandmother (vovó).

The living room of Dan's host family- though this is from a different day, with a couple other volunteers, Scott and Olivia, as well. The two kids on the right are my host-siblings Teresa and Mundo. 

I wondered what I was supposed to say, especially since I didn’t even know how to say much at all, but luckily Dan’s mãe and pai asked me a handful of questions I was pretty much able to answer, like who my host-mãe is, what kind of teacher I’m training to be for Peace Corps, and what else I like to do. When I mentioned I brought a guitar, they asked if I could sing. I made the mistake of answering,

“Oh, a little bit, not very good, but-“

and their basic response was “AH, OH WOW, SHOW US! SING SOMETHING!!!”

I spent literally at least 30 seconds of awkward silence trying to think of a song, since of course in that moment I couldn’t think of any. Finally, I sang them “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head”, since it’s a song I’ve been made to sing before and therefore was the only one I finally thought of. I didn’t know how much they actually wanted to hear, so I kept going until about halfway through the song Dan’s pai started clapping and they all started saying “Oh, wow, great, very good!” Well, I figured this was a good a time as any to stand up and make the excuse of needing to go home now for dinner. Luckily, they accepted that just fine and Teresa and I said goodbye, headed back out, re-locked the gate, and walked home, thinking.

“Let’s go find the world!”, was what I thought Teresa had said to me earlier. Even though that wasn’t what she meant, it was really sort of true after all. I’ve switched continents and hemispheres, and learning a little bit more all the time about life outside of the culture I grew up in; which, incidentally, is a lot less self-explanatory than most westerners would like to believe. So, world- consider yourself in the process of being found!

First Day of Homestay

I’m here!

My homestay house in Namaacha

Although it’s been nice to be unplugged for a few weeks, on the bright side now I get to look up the next day’s weather forecast- and of course update this blog! Although Peace Corps gave us all phone SIM cards on the first day, I wasn’t able to unlock the smartphone I brought with me without wifi, and since wifi is scarce and/or extremely expensive here, I wasn’t able to log on until I had the chance to buy a personal internet modem instead. Peace Corps even made arrangements to have modems pre-registered and brought to us at training to make it a little easier. So here I am! It’s worked out with just a few kinks here and there- everything takes a little longer in Mozambique. Even though I’ve got a lot to catch up on, I’m going to go back and start writing where I left off, and probably work my way back up to the present within a few posts.

We arrived at our homestay houses on Sunday afternoon, September 28^th, in Namaacha, the town where we’ll be staying with our host families for the next ten weeks during our Portuguese language and technical training. As we left on mini-busses from our fancy hotel in Maputo (which we’d gotten to stay at because apparently it’s the only place big enough to accommodate our large group), it felt like we were finally traveling to the Mozambique we’d been expecting from the start.

I was trying not to think about the fact that I didn’t really know much actual, practical Portuguese. I used the Duolingo app over the summer, which is a good program except I realized too late that for some reason it doesn’t teach many words or phrases you might actually need. Duolingo taught me how to say things like “The boy eats an apple” and “The municipality is on the border”. Meanwhile, I had no idea how to say “My name is _____,” “How are you?” or “Where is the bathroom?”, among a million other, you know, typically necessary things. Luckily, it seemed I wasn’t alone, since half of everyone on the bus spent the two-hour ride nervously studying their dictionaries and the survival-phrases cheat sheet Peace Corps had given us the day before. We were all a combination of thrilled and terrified to be meeting our host families soon.

On the bus

Some of the landscape on the road to the Namaacha- the pictures don't really do it justice

When we finally left the wide-open terrain and pulled into the center of Namaacha, we immediately saw the huge crowd of people gathered at the basketball court. I sat there, a little shell-shocked. For some reason I’d assumed we’d stop at the Peace Corps office or someplace first, get oriented in town, then go to the host family ceremony.

NOPE!

There were at least a couple hundred people milling around. I didn’t know if they were there for our arrival, or if there was something else that had been going on. Although I guess over 50 foreigners in a small town is always a spectacle. As our bus pulled around into the parking lot, the tension inside the bus ramped up- or maybe it just felt that way because Matt, a current volunteer who was riding with us to help with training, chose that moment to put on a jokingly high voice and yell “OH MY GOD, THEY’RE HERE, WHAT AM I GOING TO DO, WHAT AM I GOING TO SAY!!!”, which caused all us newbies to start freaking out in the same way ;)

We got out and walked down the bleachers to the court floor, where our host mães stood in a semi-circle, singing. I tried not to freak out more. Soon the singing was done, and we each walked around the circle to find our mãe holding a sign with our name on it. I found my mãe, Olympia, a big and friendly lady, about three-quarters of the way around the circle.

She took my hand and we followed the stream of volunteers and mães up and out of the gym area. All of the Portuguese words I knew that hadn’t managed to fly out of my head the moment we’d arrived in Namaacha, I used up in our the first fifteen seconds of interaction. As we walked up the bleachers, she took my guitar to help carry my things, and asked (in Portuguese) “Do you play the guitar?”. As she took it from me, I responded with “Oh, thanks! Yes, I uh… yes. I like… the guitar. It’s… very good!” The only reason I even remembered the word for guitar was because my mãe had just said it. She nodded.

As we started walking down the road, I started seizing on pretty much whichever Portuguese (or Spanish) words popped into my head based on the surroundings. We passed a huge purple flowering tree (which you will not be hearing the last of- I’m kind of obsessed with them now), and said, “Oh, very pretty! I like…” I didn’t know the word for ‘plants’. “Uh… I like… those. These summer I works… uh, I work, for flowers to buy… uh, I mean…uh…“

Mãe: “You sold plants?”

Me: “Yes! That. I sells plants. In past, I mean. In summer.”

We walked on another ten minutes or so, me speaking the occasional sentence of nonsensical Portuguese, and my mãe patiently responding. Finally, we arrived at a rust-red painted metal gate, walked a narrow path around the concrete house, and stepped up through the entrance in back. Inside, there was a door immediately on my right. “Your room,” my mãe said, and pushed open the door. There was a double bed with a blue sheet, a small closet space, a trunk full of stuff from Peace Corps (a water filter, bedsheets, towels), and my large backpack was already on the bed, having already been delivered by Peace Corps staff a few hours earlier.

I got a short tour of the kitchen, dining/living room, and backyard with the bathhouse out back. It’s funny, because after looking back even after just a couple of days, my perspective has changed so much. On this first day, I’ll admit I didn't feel totally comfortable there. The house felt small, the kitchen felt dark and damp, the yard barren and scattered haphazardly with rocks, and the whole place felt sort of quiet and isolated, despite being in the middle of a large neighborhood.

Now that I’ve gotten settled and more used to the Mozambican way of things, I can see that my house is actually very chic (or chique, as one might say here), and carefully cleaned and organized, with quite a lot of luxuries. The living room has a neat rug and comfy couches, and there is a solid wooden dining table with six sturdy, matching chairs and a clean tablecloth and runner always on the table. There is a (sometimes, depending on the level of the water tank) flush toilet both inside and outside the house, a TV and DVD player sitting on a set of large and nice wooden shelves, with framed glass pictures and decorations. The kitchen has a working refrigerator, an electric kettle, and an electric stovetop and toaster oven. The backyard is large, relatively private, and someone has gone to the work of planting and maintaining several flower bushes and sections of grass, all around the house. Also, nearly all the windows are glass, and open and close easily.

As I set up my water filter, I met my host-cousin, 15-year-old Chaide, and my 8-year-old niece, Teresa. Since they live in the house though, in Mozambican terms they’re pretty much my brother and sister. Though I tried to help, Chaide pretty much set up the filter for me, and Teresa stared silently while trying to touch all the crinkly plastic packaging. Afterwards, it was time to head to the Peace Corps science hub for language interviews, which would help place us in language groups for our upcoming weeks of training. Chaide led me and another volunteer there, since we didn’t know our own way around Namaacha yet. Chaide was pretty cool and patient while talking to us during the walk, during which I felt a little more relaxed than I had during that first walk with my mãe. There is hope for my Portuguese after all! :D

On top of that, my interview went well- TOO well, it felt like, because somehow even though with my host family I wasn’t so hot at communicating, when the instructor giving the interview spoke, I was able to understand just enough to be able to answer the questions (which were things like “What is your host mother’s name?”, “What are your hobbies?”, “What is your Peace Corps assignment?”), and avoid answers that included words I didn’t know.  So I worried a bit that I might be put in a language level too high for me, but figured it’d work out fine either way.

Once back home, I was finally getting around to organizing my room and putting things away, when I heard the door open… and turned around to find Teresa standing right behind me. I’d been hoping to be left alone for a while, but since Teresa hadn’t talked much to me yet, I didn’t want to scare here away (*note that in hindsight two weeks later I am LAUGHING UPROARIOUSLY at the idea that I ever thought this was possible). So I rushed through putting away the rest of my things- partly because I could barely stop Teresa from keeping her hands off EVERYTHING I took out of my bag. When we went back to sit in the living room, it turned out that my possessions weren’t the only thing she liked- the moment I was sitting down, she immediately started stroking my hair and making as many braids as she could (it’s a good thing my hair isn’t as long anymore!), chattering the whole time now that she seemed to have gotten over her initial shyness.

Before going to bed, I also had the chance to totally MASTER my first bucket bath- no running water, no problem! Piece of cake. I’m probably going to be using less water in the next two years than I ever used in two days in the U.S. Or something like that. Anyway, maybe that’ll make up for the fact that I’ll be burning all my trash. Who knows ;)