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!