14/11/09

Today Erica and i went to Maputo after classes. We went to A Casa de Elephante, a famous capulana shop. It is almost information overload when you walk in, there are just hundreds and hundreds of beautiful patterns everywhere. We then went to the wood market where I got a frame to put in a picture of me with my family to give them. Erica bought a drum! I had two incredibly rich and delicious milkshakes at lunch. A number of restaurants I have been to advertise milkshakes on their menus but then never actually have them. It's a terrible tease. After we went to a store in the front of the chinese hotel, I don't what the real name is, the volunteer just call it the chinese walmart. The Mambas, the Mozambican soccer team, had a game today that some of our colleagues went to. Admission was 1OO meticais, about $4. When I returned home everyone had gone to Maputo to see the new baby cousin so my 13 year old cousin and I were on our own for dinner. Erica and Diana came over and we made banana pancakes with chocolate syrup and onion and tomato scrambled eggs. It was fun in cook and so nice to do it without anyone hovering and commenting on how strangely (or wrong) we were doing things. It was funny, my 16 year old cousin took advantage of everyone being away by throwing a rowdy party with his friends, when all we wanted to do was cook our own food, our own way.

13/11/09

One really interesting thing about here is that because we are so near to the equator the sun passes almost directly overhead which causes the sunrises and sunsets to be incredibly fast. It can be kind of dangerous because you may think you have time to get home before dark, but the sun sets (like from daylight to complete darkness) in about 2O minutes. I hate walking home in the dark here, not because I am afraid for my safety in terms or robbers or assailants, but because the roads are in such bad shape I am afraid of twisting am ankle!

12/11/09

One of my colleague’s sisters is in high school and recently took the national English exam. One multiple choice question was “which are all modes of transport?” In the correct option, one of the listed modes was a tractor. It is very common to see people driving down the main road in town on tractors, and not necessarily going to or from the farm. Today our APCD’s (I don’t remember what that stands for, but they are in charge) talked about the sites that are opening up for this year. Since there are only ten chemistry teachers we definitely have more of an idea of possible sites than people in larger groups like English or health. We will find out our site placements two weeks from today! My mom is taking her final exams this week. Yesterday we had an exam on the Bantu languages of Mozambique, today was a Portuguese exam. Tomorrow she has math, so I was helping her study tonight. I was able to explain area and circumference of a circle which apparently her teacher didn’t understand, so just wrote the information on the board and walked out.

11/11/09

24 of us (we almost filled a whole minibus) left Tofo for our homestays at 3:30am this morning. I took Imodium this time. American conceptions of privacy and personal space simply don’t exist here. Once, my mom brought up the fact that I was on my period in dinner conversation. When walking around town, it is quite common to bump you as they walk by, because it’s simply not rude to make physical contact. On chapas, you can just forget any personal space. People are crammed four across into the seat, so there is barely room for everyone, and on the chapa ride today both women on either side of me fall asleep and one ended up with her head on my shoulder and the other was basically sleeping in my lap. One thing that bothers me is that saying “excuse me” basically gives people license to physically move you out of the way. But at least they are polite about it, I suppose. I didn’t realize until I wrote the date that it is Veterans Day. That means that in Culver, Indiana some 900 kids and adults are standing outside freezing their asses off.

10/11/09

It seems that I have forgotten how to take a shower—I choked twice in the shower this morning. Apparently you can’t inhale when you’re under the water (there is always plenty of time to inhale in between cupfuls with my bucket baths). Today we took a boat from Maxixe to Inhambane city, which took about 30 minutes and I was pretty certain the motor was going to die a few times. We water is deceivingly shallow, even after the boat had been moving for ten minutes there were men standing out in the water fishing with the water at about their waists. It was kind of surreal. We then caught a chapa from Inhambane to Tofo beach, the famously beautiful tourist trap, to meet up with about 40 other Peace Corps people, current volunteers and their visiting trainees. One thing that sucked about Tofo was that there were white people everywhere, so we got mistaken for tourists too, meaning that vendors would try to speak English to us and would try to charge us about 4x as much as they should.

09/11/09

Right now is national exam time, so Becky and Stephanie both had to proctor two tenth grade national exams this morning. Meagan and I tagged along to see their school and facilities and to see a little of how things are run. However, apparently when people saw us this morning, a few of them decided that that meant that they could have the day off, so we found ourselves actually controlling two national exams today. Luckily all national exams are co-proctored, but there are 60 biology and drawing national exams with my signature on them now! Cheating is a huge problem in Mozambican schools, but luckily it’s harder to cheat (in terms of bringing in cheat sheets) on the national exams. Still, there is a ton of helpful sharing of information. It’s hard for me to even understand in many ways, because I wouldn’t want someone else benefitting from my hard work, but here the mentality is much more communal and many people simply don’t see the problem with sharing. This evening we met up with some more volunteers in the area and I met a guy who isn’t a Peace Corps volunteer, but is living in Inhambane city working for a health organization and is from Yarmouth, Maine!

08/11/09

I ate seven mangos today. We got up at about 6am in typical Mozambique fashion, made mango and banana crepes, and just hung out in their yard for most of the morning. They have shade cover over part of their yard (essential because it gets hot!), and have a few kids who basically live in their yard. For lunch we went to town and met up with a bunch of other volunteers who live in the area and their visiting trainees. After we went to the beach near their house. It is perfectly acceptable to have alcohol in public here, so we all bought beers and walked down the beach with them. The large beers are actually cheaper here than the regular (16oz) beers because the large bottles are returnable, so being the environmentally conscious Peace Corps volunteers we are, we all got the big ones. At the end of the beach is a small mountain and we climbed to the top where the view was gorgeous: the Indian Ocean on one side and palm trees as far as you can see on the other. We couldn’t find a chapa back to their house, so we walked for a while until we were able to hitch a ride in the back of a pickup truck. Giving rides and hitchhiking are pretty common here, to the point that it’s rude to drive by people without picking them up.

07/11/09

As a Peace Corps volunteer every day brings new challenges and some days you are trying to save the world, and other days you’re just trying to get by. Today my big accomplishment was that I didn’t poop my pants. We left for our site visits at 4am this morning. We took chapas (the mode of transportation in Mozambique. They are vans into which 18 passengers (no fewer, chapas won’t leave unless they are full), the driver, and the conductor are crammed) to Maputo where we were swarmed by drivers eager to transport all the white people. As we were loading our bus a ~18 month boy was wandering the aisles crying. At one point a man held him up and asked whose he was, but nobody claimed him. His mom eventually found him. Then about 5 hours into the 6 hour ride I got very sick and I would have to say that not knowing whether or not I was going to poop my pants on a bus full of people is one of the worst feelings I have ever felt in my life (and no, of course the buses here don’t have bathrooms—the houses don’t even have bathrooms). Meagan, another trainee who will be a biology teacher, and I visited Stephanie and Becky, who are chemistry and biology teachers, respectively, and live together in Inhambane province. Their site is pretty amazing. They are a ten minute walk from the ocean, a 15 minute walk from the market, a 20 minute walk from school, and near large cities which is good for buying essentials that can’t be found in small towns. Also, they have running water! They have a shower, flushing toilet, and sink with running water in their outdoor bathroom. They also have a faucet in their yard. I can live without the shower or flushing toilet, but the convenience of having a faucet in their yard, of never having to go get water in many large buckets, is just amazing.

06/11/09

We leave tomorrow morning at 4am for our site visits. Of course, my mom is insisting on packing me a lunch and walking me to the bus stop in the morning. I tried to tell her that I didn’t need to pack a lunch and I had already bought snacks for the drive, but no use. She asked what time I was getting up to take a bath and have tea before I left, I said no way. The idea of leaving the house without first having tea is borderline sacrilegious, so she tried to convince me to take the thermos into my room to have my tea in my room (though I’m not really sure how that would make any difference). When I said no she tried to convince me to take the thermos on the trip with me.

05/11/09

Change is almost impossible to come by here. No matter what you are buying and how small the currency you use, the vendor will still give you a slightly pained expression when they realize you expect change. Whe exchange rate is 26-29 meticais per dollar. Last week i bought something for 19 mets with a 2O met coin. This has station with a computer register and electronic scanner didn't have change and when I made it clear that I didn't also want the imitation starburst for 1 met, the woman had to go outside and ask one of the pump attendants for the 1 met I was owed. Today, at a bar/store, I wanted to buy a yogurt for 25 mets but only had a 1OO met bill (the equivalent of less than $4). The man didn't have change. Erica also bought a 25 met water so it would be easier to come up with change. If still wasn't able to find 5O mets, so if said to wait and he sent a kid to the bank to get change. When the any returned from the bank he had exchanged the 1OO met bill for one hundred 1 met coins. Thus, I was given fifty 1 met coins as change. The man was nice, he gave me a plastic bag to carry them in. Last night we had a tremendous rainstorm, with the metal roofs on our house it is one of the loudest noises I have ever heard, but oddly very peaceful to sleep to. A colleague today told how at 2am last night his host mom called his bell phone from the next room to ask if if was afraid of the storm. Tonight at dinner my grandma, very concerned, asked me the same.

04/11/09

Not many people can boast of having gone from black to blonde to black to bald in one year. But I can, because I shaved my head today. We found out where we are going on our site visits today. I am really excited to see other parts of Mozambique! Our director gave us our hosts' information and said "call your hosts, but wait until tomorrow. Don't call them today, we haven't talked to all of them yet." Such is life in the Peace Corps. I made the mistake of looking at the water my cousin was using to wash the dishes. It was the same red color of the dirt here. Yum. I have gotten quite adept at putting on my wants without letting them ever touch the floor. Even though I sweep every other day, one brush against the floor and the are instantly red/brown.

03/11/09

We went to orphanages today to practice implementing nonformal education and to basically play with the kids. The place I went to was more on the order of a boarding school though. It's actually the school my cousins go to and where we go to church. Some of the girls recognized me from church and this definitely answered my question as to why there are always so many kids in church! Many times my mom will year a capulana skirt and wrap her head with one as well and will look exactly like the stereotypical African woman. Then other times she will put on her skinny jeans, fashionable sandals, denim jacket, framed glasses, and matching headband and earrings and she could be any young woman in urban America.

02/11/09

Today I was interviewing a cousin for a homework project and I asked him his age. He gave me a weird look, he didn't know. He knew his birth date though so he wrote that down and I told him he is 24 years old. He is in the ninth grade but my mom said that it is not uncommon where we live for people that old to be only in secondary school. For the same project I asked my mom how old her son's father (her boyfriend) is. She didn't know, maybe 28 or 29. There are two bakeries in town. The one by the market has just wonderful homemade bread, think sourdough quality. The other bakery is just not that good, think supermarket quality, drier and flakier. My family gets bread everyday, but seemed to switch between the two bakeries without any pattern which I didn't understand because they taste so different but cost the same. I finally asked my mom why some days we get bread from one bakery and some days the other. She said she likes the one by the market more (the good stuff) but grandma had said that I would like the other bread better. This morning my mom asked me if I liked something. I didn't know the word so she showed me a tin of something like canned tuna. I said sure, I eat anything, and she said "okay good because I put it in your salad." Oh, the homestay experience.

01/11/09

Today is November 1st, first day of hockey season. I don't mind that I don't get to skate today, but I do miss that today I don't get to be a Bowdoin Women's Ice Hockey player. Last night we had our Halloween party. It was the first time since we began training that we have all gotten together and done something really fun, so it was just such a nice release. Everyone’s costumes were really great, and all of the Mozambicans thought we were crazy. For the second weekend in a row I want to do laundry, but we are out of water. I explained to my mom though that I really need to do it today since I wasn’t able to last weekend, so they are buying some water. I still haven’t learned to carry things on my head but I really want to! You will see people here carrying huge containers of water or crates filled with two liter glass soda bottles on their head, it’s incredible. A few of my colleagues are starting their machamba (garden) today, so I will go over and see how their swales and berms look. I learned today that my little brother has another name everyone calls him by, and suddenly things make a lot more sense. A cousin died and in Mozambican culture family goes to stay with the family of the deceased, so I haven´t seen my grandma in days.

31/10/09

Halloween. In Mozambique, simply the 31st of October, which for all of the kids (like my extremely excited little brother) is the first day of summer vacation. Something I have noticed more as my Portuguese is improving, there are many instances where I understand all of the words that are said to me, but I still have the feeling that (and I’m sure look as though) I don’t understand, because I don’t know why I am being told this information. One of the current volunteers here said that it is pretty common for Mozambicans to sort of bury their questions, such that it sounds like they have simply stated something, but they are expecting a response. The other night when my aunt was here she told me something and then asked if I understood. I said that I wasn’t sure I had understood everything, so she repeated what she had said in English. Turns out that I had understood everything she said the first time when she said it in Portuguese, but I still have no idea why she told me.