Placed

Two words: Angoche, Nampula. Two more: beach site. Woot.

Anyway, something you all can do for me, since I have zero time and even less money, is use your superfast internet to research my site for me and email me what you find. Obrigads! (portuguese for "thanks!").

The next two weeks will be pretty busy, and on December 9th I fly to Nampula. Basically, what I have to do now is learn the local language (some variant of Swahili) in case they don't speak Portuguese there (fairly likely), try to buy stuff for my house, and try to figure out how to get my stuff up there.

That's it. Hope the holiday season is going well back home.

Tchau,

Alison

But it's not all chocolate and cheese over here...

I know I've been posting a lot about my own transition to life over here, and I think that it's a legitimate topic for me to talk about. After all, it's hard to leave everyone, establish new ties, and try to live in a completely new culture. In the same vein, it's easy to get caught up in talking about that, in continually posting about how great it is to eat cheese. It's also easy to get caught up talking with the other Americans about stuff we miss, like yesterday when we expounded for half an hour about why Costco is so wonderful. That type of stuff is fun, and necessary to help us cope.

But life here in the last week has thrown me for a loop. Two people in our community have died senseless deaths, deaths that probably wouldn't happen in a place with more resources. The first was actually one of the men who rents a room out of our 'dependencia' (extra house) and works over at a construction project across from my house, helping build a school. I first met him a few weeks ago when I was doing my laundry in the stone basin in our courtyard and he came up and got a little bit in my face. It was Sunday, his day off, and he's obviously had a few beers. He asked me about myself a lot and it became apparent that he was harmless, just interested in the American living nearby. I saw him a few more times after that, and a few days ago I waved goodbye to him as I left to go teach in model school.

Later that afternoon, when I was walking home from model school, I saw my host sister downtown, and she told me the bad news: there had been some sort of accident at the construction site, involving the crane and a bunch of concrete blocks being dropped. Our renter happened to be below the blocks, and his condition was grave. He was taken to Maputo, about one and half hours away with a broken arm and cuts to the head.

I found out the next day that he died during the night.

Obviously, this has affected me. I knew this man, and he was a good person, working here in Namaacha at one of the only jobs available to support his family in another town. Of course, things like this happen in the States, but in a town this size in the States, the hospital would have been able to handle his injuries. I keep thinking about that last morning I saw him and about the random nature of life.

The other case, though, affects me even more. The neighbor of one of the other trainees went into labor the other day and went to the hospital to give birth. But there were complications and she needed a cesarean section--something our hospital can't do because it can't get sterile enough. So she had to be taken to Maputo, but since there are only two ambulances for the hospital, they had to wait to see if others had to be taken to Maputo as well. In the process of waiting, she and her baby died. She was twenty-two.

It's these types of things that remind me that even though I am doing fine here and can focus on finding things I like to eat from the States, there are real and serious problems that need to be addressed. The woman who died was my age, and she didn't have to die. Lack of resources and bad luck dictated her fate, and she perished because of soemthing almost completely controllable. It's frustrating to realize that and to not know how to even begin to address it. But I just wanted you guys to know that what's happening over here is larger than anything I can write on this blog.

Now with pictures...

My host sister Neida. She takes good care of me.


Nuria, Cintura, Me, cousin Vagnar.


My host brother Cintura. There's a lot of posing going on in Mozambique.


Walking around Namaacha.


My host sister Nuria. She's four and completely adorable.

Like when I became a vegetarian, only different...

So anyway, I know you guys are dying for details over there, as I know I was when I used to read other PCVs' blogs, but I've been struggling to figure out how to communicate all the differences as well as the similarities, because, really, some things aren't that different. There are paved roads here, for instance, and some places have flush toilets. More generally, people still eat regularly here (five times a day!!!!), and they bathe, and work, and wash their clothes. It's just the manner of it that is different. Instead of stepping into a hot shower each morning, I heat up some water in the stove, pour it into a bucket in the tub, and pour bucketfuls over my head to clean myself. Really, it's not that different--you stop noticing it after awhile.

So I came to the conclusion that living in Africa in some ways parallels my decision, four years ago now, to become a vegetarian. From the outside, it looks as though I'm depriving myself, that I'm doing something maybe a little out there, a little crazy. And in the beginning, it did feel like a deprivation to not eat meat: I missed it, I craved it, I thought about eating it. But after awhile, I stopped missing it. And not only that, but something else happened as well: I began to be more satisfied with the choices I was making, foodwise, simply because there were fewer options. Some of my vegetarian friends and I have discussed this, especially with regards to restaurants. Before becoming a vegetarian, I sometimes used to hem and haw about what to get at a restaurant, trying to decide what to order out of many possible things. After I became a vegetarian, I would look for the one or two item I could eat, and then order one of those. And, by and large, I was happy with my choice, happier choosing between two than between twenty.

Living in Africa is the same way for me, so far at least. Options are fewer, but that makes choosing easier. There are fewer things to do here, so playing cards for an afternoon becomes a treat. There is only Laughing Cow cheese in my town, so going to the capital for a pizza is a big deal, and so delicious. I only have five books to read right now, so I enjoy them, because I enjoy reading. It's like that: intangible and satisfying. Now, I'm only hoping that when I get back to the States in two years, I can remember how to do this. I'm hoping I can still be satisfied amidst all the choices.

Mozambican Time

One of the first things we learned about when we arrived in country was the idea of Mozambican Time: that things sometimes take much longer in Mozambique than we Americans are used to. If you’ve been checking this blog regularly for updates, and found it lacking, I do apologize, but I blame it on the fact that I’ve become accustomed to Mozambican time. This is a Mozambican blog, after all.

But in all seriousness, I’ve been a little wary of updating this blog until I had a better sense of what was going on here, with me and in Mozambique in general. The first few weeks here were hectic, and if I wrote something here, I risked rushing to conclusions or making stereotypical judgments about Africa in general and Mozambique in particular. I needed a little time to process, to normalize what’s going on, and to not make blanket judgments based on what happened one day, one week, or one month.

That said, it’s hard to believe I’ve been here over a month. Suddenly, things are seeming normal, things like taking a “chapa” around, jammed in with many other people, or looking forward to going to the capital because I’ll finally get to eat something with cheese on or in it.

At the same time, I feel like I’m still processing what’s going on around me, and I’ve only just begun to learn about Mozambique and Mozambican culture. I feel as though things are happening faster than I can keep up with them, so I didn’t want to write anything. But, here it is anyway, some thoughts about my time so far in Mozambique, staying with a host family.

Staying with a host family is inherently difficult, especially when we come from such different cultures with different ideas of independence and family, but all in all I think I lucked out. I have a host sister who’s about my age who understands that I need to leave every once in awhile, go visit friends, walk around, etc. She also takes care of my every need: cooking food that I like, heating the water for my bucket baths, letting me be alone in my room when I need that. It’s a little much sometimes, but I really appreciate all that she does for me. My younger host brother and sister are adorable and I like to play cards with them. They think my Portuguese is funny (which it is), and they are generally full of life and fun. I enjoy them a lot.

My host mom, I think, doesn’t quite know what to do with me. I don’t speak Portuguese well enough to understand everything she says, but she’s finally started to slow herself down to make sure I understand the gist. And it’s true that she’s never had a foreigner staying in her house before—or at least not one like me, and it’s an adjustment process all around. And it’s temporary, so we’re all adjusting just to eventually go our separate ways. I think the homestay, though, is a good idea for Peace Corps volunteers in terms of us learning lots about the culture in a very short time. I appreciate it, at least, as a way to ease into life in this foreign land.

Besides interacting with my host family, my days usually consist of language class and technical training about teaching English. Sometimes we have a session about medical stuff and keeping ourselves healthy and safe in Mozambique, and sometimes we learn about HIV/AIDs here and how to integrate that into teaching English. Recently, we’ve started having sessions about starting boys’ or girls’ clubs at site, and I’m really excited to get to work on something like this (called a “secondary project”). Gender roles and expectations were important and interesting to me in the States, and it’s exciting to know that I can try to bring that to what I’m doing over here. And what am I doing over here? That’s a question I ask myself every day, and the answer changes almost as often. Today, I’m excited to live in Mozambique for the simple fact of being here and experiencing it, to just say that I did it.