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

Vamos dançar!

So, ever since I got here, I've been trying to get the neighborhood kids to teach me Mozambican dances. Well, the first step- finding kids- is not a problem. As soon as they can walk, crianças pretty much wander around outside together all day, latching on to anything and anyone interesting enough to play with, especially the weird foreign Americans. Organizing said crianças though... that's a different story.

Anyway, I had my chance one evening when a friend of my host-sister Teresa's came over to our house for a short visit. Her name is Cozinha, or Zinha, and she's probably my favorite of the neighborhood kids- she's always smiling and friendly, but she's also calm and responsible, unlike your typical neighborhood criança. While she was over, we got to talking, and she and Teresa enthusiastically agreed to show me some dances and have me videotape them. Unfortunately, though, it was too dark for the video to show anything, and I told them we'd have to do it again later during the day. I didn't hold out too much hope for this though, since I expected Zinha and Teresa to forget about it for at least a couple weeks.

The next day, Saturday, I got home around noon from morning language classes to find Teresa and Zinha... and about six other neighborhood kids, including my little brother Mundo. Zinha came up to me excitedly, "Mana Helena!" she said (mana means 'big sister'- it's common for kids to call any older girls that), "Can we make the dance video now?!?"

Well... who can say no to that? :)

First, I tried to have them show me some of their dances. To varying success:

My host-sister Teresa is in the yellow shirt and blue pants, and Mundo is the little guy in the blue shirt. Zinha has the red and yellow skirt. By the way, don't ask me where any of these dances actually come from- I tried to ask them what the various ones they showed me are called, and they just gave me blank stares. Then again, my Portuguese still wasn't too great at the time, so that probably didn't help.

Then they also wanted a video with me dancing. Unfortunately, Zinha and Teresa kept accidentally changing the camera settings and/or pressing the 'Start' and 'Stop' buttons right after each other, so we made literally fourteen videos that each turned out something like this:

Or this:

Guys, are you sure that's the right button...?

But finally we conseguir-ed!

"Agora vamos ver Mana Helena a dançar!" means "Now we're going to see big sister Helena dance!". The crianças like their chants. As evidenced by the next video I took, where they kept chanting even though obviously I wasn't dancing anymore:

Good times had by all! :D

To Kill A Chicken... (or two)

One afternoon, a couple weeks into training, I was sitting with my mãe behind the house when my host-brother Chaide came by with a large white bucket. I figured it was filled with water. Until my mãe dragged it over to peer inside, and a white-feathered head poked it’s beak out.

I leaned over the bucket and saw a second head as well, and more white feathers beneath. “How many are there in here?” I asked my mãe.

“Four!” she said, starting to pull the chickens out and set them on the ground. They timidly waddled around a bit, and settled against the wall. Then she pointed at me with a wide smile, and said “And today YOU get to kill them!”, as if it was some kind of treat. Which, for a lot of Mozambicans (and some Americans), it is.

Awaiting their fate

 I’d known this would happen at some point- a lot of other volunteers in our group had already had to slaughter chickens for dinner with their families. The stories hadn’t made me any more keen to do it myself- lots of them had to make do with dull knives, or other dubious methods, and it didn’t sound like such a fun time. With my own family, I’d been starting to think I was off the hook. After all, I’d already been here a couple weeks, and my mãe had never mentioned it. I’d started to think that maybe my family didn’t slaughter their own chickens after all, and just bought ready-frozen chicken- though I know buying meat that way is expensive here.

I made a few casual attempts to get out of it. “Oh, uh, I don’t really want to…”

My mãe laughed. “You don’t like to kill? Are you afraid?” she asked, grinning, like this was the funniest idea ever.

“Well- I mean, I don’t want to do it wrong, and hurt the chicken-“

My mãe dismissed this with a hand wave. “Chickens don’t have feelings. You want to go hungry? What will you do when you live alone? Are you going to just eat couve every day? ONLY couve, today, and the next day, and the next day-“

“That’s fine!” I interjected. “And I can eat beans too. It’s fine. I don’t need meat. Lots of people are vegetarian!”

This she refused to believe, no matter how much I insisted it was true. “Only very few people are vegetarian,” she said, “Very few. Maybe one or two in each group of volunteers. And they only become vegetarians after coming to Mozambique.“ She shook her head at the idea of people making such silly decisions.

“No really!” I tried, “I know lots of vegetarians in the U.S.! And I don’t mind not eating meat either. It’s really totally fine-“

But my mãe wouldn’t hear any of it. Finally I figured that if in the past I’d been willing to eat chicken slaughtered by other people, it didn’t make much of a practical difference if I was the one who did it or not. These chickens’ fate was sealed either way- and besides, the reality is that if I want or need to eat meat at home at all once I get to my site, the cheapest and most hygienic option is to learn to prepare it myself. Self-sufficiency for the win, y’all.

I insisted on watching my mãe do it first before trying it myself. She picked up one of the chickens and brought it over to the edge of the yard. With a knife she neatly swept clear a flat patch of dirt, then sharpened the blade on the nearby rocks. With her feet she held down the chicken’s feet and wings, and gripped the head in her left hand. “Easy!” she proclaimed. “Very, easy.” Then, without any further ceremony, used the knife to saw halfway through the chicken’s throat.

It really did go faster and “easier” than I expected. Within about five seconds the chicken was dead, and though it did give a few of those infamous post-mortem twitches, it was nothing too crazy. My mãe let the little bit of blood drain from the neck, swept some dirt over the blood, then carried the chicken over to a pot of hot water she’d had ready. She dunked the chicken in the hot water for less than a minute, then took it out and immediately started plucking the feathers. “See?” she said, “Easy!”. Um, okay. We’ll see about that.

Next it was my turn. I went to grab a chicken. But I wasn’t sure how to pick it up. “Uh, mãe, how do I…”

“By the wings!” she called.

Okay. I picked one up. It was a lot more timid than I expected, and barely put up a fight. I brought it over to the yard, and awkwardly tried to hold it down the way my mãe had. I was trying not to hurt it, so the wings kept escaping from under my foot. “Step on the wings, here!” my mãe commanded impatiently, and I did, wincing as the chicken protested.

“And I hold the head, like this?” I asked nervously.

“Yes, yes,” my mãe responded.

“And I cut, here?” I said, not wanting to prolong the situation if I unwittingly cut the wrong part of the neck or something.

“Yes, yes, yes,” mãe said, unconcerned.

Okay… well, there was no point in waiting any longer. I sawed at the neck as quickly as I could, it seemed to work, and in not much more time than it had taken when my mãe did it, it was done. A few more twitches from the chicken, and we set to plucking it and setting it in the basin of clean water with the first.

Plucked, cleaned, and ready for cooking and/or freezing

While I was still plucking my chicken, my mãe killed the third, then came and told me that the fourth was still my responsibility- two for two. Okay, though it hadn't been the funnest thing ever, the first one really hadn’t gone so badly. I could do this. “Easy, easy.”

I went and got the fourth chicken, held it down, and set to cutting the neck as quickly as I could. However, in my attempt to do it fast, this time I accidentally cut through the neck completely, decapitating the chicken. Blood spurted from the neck, spraying all over my feet. Meanwhile, both the head and the body were completely freaking out, way more than either of the last three chickens. I still held the head in my left hand because I didn’t want to drop it in the dirt, but oh god I could feel the beak snapping and all the nerves in the head still twitching. And with just one hand free to hold down the body, one wing broke free from my grip and started flapping up and down in my face.

“Uh, mãe? Mãe?!?” I shouted in panic.

“Hmm?” she responded casually, fifteen feet away, her back to me, still calmly plucking the last chicken.

Finally, the poor dead chicken settled down, and I brought it over for plucking and cleaning. As we finished up, my mãe brought over another basin of water, grinning.

“Ah, now Helena is a Mozambican woman!” she said proudly.

I laughed. Uh, sure. We’ll see about that. Maybe once I figure out how to balance a bucket of water on my head too. For now, at least, I’m ready to take at least a few weeks’ break from the slaughterhouse activities, since these four chickens will be frozen to last us for several weeks. Whew! ;)

Xima and 'fresh' chicken from the day's work