When it comes to Key’s, I have a Problem.

Today, just like every other day, I woke up feeling over-whelmed.  I’ve got nothing to do, but at the same time, I have the weight of everything I could be doing descansar’ing on my shoulders. I should be integrating; I should be practicing my Portuguese; I should be learning Macua; I should be outside playing with Criancas; I should be working in my Machamba (I’ve been planting corn and grass!); I should be helping out at school; I should be lesson planning; I should finish unpacking; I should be building the shelves for my closet; I should find some wood so that I can actually build those shelves; I should plan my meals; I should go explore the mountains behind my school; I should call my parents.  I shouldn’t just sit here and think about all that’s looming.

It’s hard not too though.  Back in the US, I had this same problem.  I’d constantly come up with ideas of things I wanted or needed to do, and eventually that list would become so big that the psychological pressure of everything that needed to get done would cause my knees to physically buckle.  Kind of ironic that sometimes  I really suck at managing my own stress.

I’ve come to realize that shitty-stress management is not a by-product of my environment.  It was, and still is, a significant character flaw. So yesterday, I started to think about ways to improve and came up with the idea to make a change and work on organizing my life a bit better.  They say routines are dangerous, but who is “they” anyway.  The safety they provide is a really attractive feature right now, and I could use a little mindlessness in my life right now.  It’s been so long since I’ve had any sort of routine that I’ve since forgotten what it feels like.  I think I miss it.  I’ll find out so enough, because yesterday, I commenced Operation Organization. 

The day began with a schedule.  This is phase one.  My thought process is, perhaps I can start to identify the tasks I need to perform everyday (cooking breakfast, washing dishes, sweeping all the dust out of my house, checking for snakes in my bathroom, etc.) by making schedules and writing them down.  Eventually, I can use that to form a more complete picture of how I can manage my time. 

I began with my To-Do List.  It’s long, so I had problem filling in time slots.  Minute by minute and Hour by hour (sometimes devoting a little more than an hour), I began to block out my day. 7:30 to 8:30 – Eat breakfast and write a schedule; 8:30 to 8:45 – Wash dishes and sweep out kitchen; 8:45 to 9:45 - Plan out my meals for the week; 9:45 to 10:45 –  Work in the Machamba; 10:45 to 13:00 – Go to the market; 13:00 to 14:00 – Cook and eat Lunch; 14:00 to 15:00 – Write a blog post about Pemba; 15:00 to 16:00 – Continue moving in, put up coat rack, hang curtains, organize clothing; 16:00 to 17:00 – Study Portuguese.  There were a few more things thrown in, but I’m sure you get the picture.

When I finished up writing, it took a little more than 5 minutes before I had to make my first modification.  At 8:35, Allen, the missionary from down the street (by Mozambican standards) called to tell me he had found someone who would be willing to tutor me in Portuguese and Macua.  He was anxious to come meet me and would stop by my house in the afternoon.  Because I was now expecting someone, I decided push-up my departure for the market to ensure I’d be home just in case life was planning on throwing me any more curveballs.  And then it did.  An hour and a half later, the entire schedule fell apart when I locked myself out of my house.  Wow, it took less than half a day to discover how difficult keeping to a schedule in this country is going to be.

Locking myself out is a story in itself, but I’ll spare you my overly-dramatic, and long-winded interpretation of what happened and instead say that my own laziness is at fault for this one.  I changed the lock on my backdoor, but was too lazy to remove one of the keys from the ring and put it on my keychain.  “Oh, I’ll do it later,” I thought.  Well, I didn’t do it later.  Right before I left for the market and when I was in the process of locking my front door, I thought about how silly it was that I was now carrying around a key that didn’t work on any of my locks.  So, I decided to remove it.  I tested which one worked, and which didn’t, and thought I removed the bad one.  As fate would have it, I was wrong.  When it comes to dealing with keys, I seem to have some serious problems (if you’re keeping count, this one makes it three key incidents in four months).

Frustrated and unable to break-in on account of my new security bars (this epitomizes the term bittersweet), I decided to go to the market anyway and just deal with it later. When I got back a few hours later, I was able to get back in with the help of my school director and a carpenter he knows.  When I went to Pamba a few days ago, I anticipated the possibility of losing my keys, so I wanted to leave a spare set accessible in case of dire circumstances.  I tied a set to a long piece of string and hung them off the back of the security bars in one of my windows.  You could see the loop of string, but not the keys because they were hanging far below.  My plan was, if there turned out to be a problem while I was gone and I lost my keys, I could just crack the glass and pulls the string to get back in my house.  Luckily, I never removed them when I got back, so they were still there waiting to be used.  The carpenter and I managed to remove the window and I was able to fish the keys up and out bringing the whole debacle to an end. 

By the time I finally got back inside, I was exhausted, thirsty, and tired, and had no motivation to try and re-work my schedule.  I still want to try and do it, but it’s starting to look like it’s going to take a bit more work than I thought.  Ugh.

Trim Your Nose-hairs Fellas, We’re Headed to Pemba!

Christmas sure was merry.  This year, I decided to spoil myself by spending three hours sitting at the end of the second to last bench of a fly-infested Chapa without windows that opened in the back.  Also, I bought myself a lovely little deep-fried piece of unsweetened dough I as a treat along the way.  Merry indeed.

Although the mode of transportation wasn’t ideal, the destination was.  I, as well as five other volunteers (Anna;  Vikram and Rafael, the boys from Balama; and Troop Mariri, Jaime and Elizabeth) were headed to Pemba, the beach-side gem of Cabo Delgado and the province’s largest city. 

I had originally intended to write a big long post about the excursion, but I’m not feeling particularly motivated to jazz it up too much.  So, sadly, this is gonna be a bullet point highlighted post with some short stories.  Also, to those of you who have been wondering why I haven’t posted pictures in a while, I apologize for that.  And I apologize because that isn’t gonna change in this post either.  Even though it was gorgeous, I really didn’t take any pictures.  I’m still terrified to flash anything tangible that suggests the slightest hint of wealth, and my camera (although waterlogged and semi-functional) is currently an unfortunate casualty of that practice.  It’s only temporary though, and as soon as I get more comfortable with things, I’ll post lots of pictures for you to see!

So here we go…

• Pemba is hot.  And humid.  Like, way hotter than in-land Cabo.  It needs to rain there more often.
• I spent the holiday staying with some Volunteers from one of the previous groups that arrived before us.  The two girls, Ellen and Christina, live in an awesome house near their school and a 20-minute walk from a gorgeous beach.  White sand, warm water, lots of broken glass scattered among lots of equally sharp pieces of broken coral, and cute little crabs frocking every which way.
• We hung out, spoke English, cooked awesome food (this is apparently a Peace Corps custom), and reminisced about home.  We watched a couple of movies, one of which was Home Alone 2, and it made me really yearn to be in New York.  It made me miss going to visit Val when she was living up there.  Then it made me wonder what Becca was doing at that moment.
• One night, we met up with a bunch of other volunteers at a hostel by the beach we went to a random party at a Swiss guy’s house.  He was from Basil, but was an electrician in Pemba. He grew up in Mozambique, but went back home a lot.  He wants to leave, but his father just died in September and he explained that he had to stay at the house and occupy it, otherwise it would get taken from him.  Something about Mozambique being able to do that.  I dunno, sounds strange.
• Went to the beach a couple times.  The second day, we saw a kid, probably 14 or so, swimming in a one-piece snow suit; literally, zippered up to the top.  I couldn’t understand it, but from the look on his face and the way he was playing with his friends, he didn’t mind at all.  Weird.
• Caught a boleia back home to Montepuez with some Chinese Guys who were heading that way.  What luck.  These guys were great.  First and foremost, their truck was brand new and had air conditioning.  Better yet, they liked to use it.  Then, the driver bought us red bulls.  The ride itself wasn’t without some events though as we got stopped by cops twice.  The first time the driver tried to have the cops speak to us instead of him, because the Mozambican Police force is apparently not so fond of Chinese people.  Didn’t work.  He was looking for a bribe, asked our driver to step out of the car for a while, and finally let him go after a few phone calls and a potential exchange of dinheiro.  The second time we got pulled over, the cop just wanted to ask for a coke.  Oh Mozambique.

William the Goldfish

Right now I’m a spectacle.  Everyone looks at me, and everyone watches.  They’ll look into my house, they will watch me work in my yard; they’ll watch me walking, buying things in the market, examining street mangoes, talking with randoms, sweeping my floors, or tying my shoes.  I am a goldfish, and Montepuez is my fishbowl. 

Some will return my smiles; some will just stare with empty faces.  Sometimes after our eyes meet  – and this mostly happens with women –they quickly turn away and pick up their pace in an attempt to flee.  It’s as if they’ve just committed a crime or something and need to escape the scene ASAP. No big deal though, I don’t take it personally.  Usually I just write it off as some cultural difference.

When I do encounter people though, and I do often as my town is quite large and my walk to the city is quite far (4 or so kilometers from my house to the market!  Uphill!  In the snow!  With no shoes!...well, I have shoes…and it’s actually way too hot for snow), I look back, wave or give a thumbs up (that’s a big thing here among the youths, those whippersnappers) and usually offer a “Bom dia” or “Salaama” (Salaama is the equivalent to good day in Macua, the local language).  Sometimes they’ll wave, sometimes they’ll stare, and sometimes they’ll shout.  Occasionally, I’ll be called over to a group of people who want to talk. 

Most of the time, they just want to ask me for money or a cigarette.  Lots of people just want a cigarette or money for Pão to feed their bellies.  In reality, the money typically goes to alcohol.  Aside from this country’s inability to control the raging presence of alcoholism in this country, the custom of “Pedir-ing,” or asking for something from another individual, is by far my least favorite things about Mozambican culture.  The fact that it’s so engrained in this culture too is something I’ve been struggling with since I got to site.  I have yet to find out if Mozambicans will actually ask other Mozambicans for stuff, but word on the street is that they do.  It would be hard for me to believe they do it as frequently to each other as they do to me, the white, seemingly rich touristy-looking fellow. 

Occasionally though, I do get the opportunity to have a decent conversation.  I’ll introduce myself, explain what I’m doing there, and tell them that I live in the bairro. They’ll ask where I’m going or something else and I’ll respond.  The conversation will carry on for a bit longer before we end with a shared laughed, a hand-shake and finger snap, and then a farewell (“tchau amigo!”) as I head on my merry way.  A handful of times throughout the duration of my walk, people will greet me in English and ask how I’m doing.  As if it’s been scripted and taught to every single person here (and it probably has, because they all learn English in school), the conversation goes something like this:

Random Mozambican: “Hello my friend!  How are you?”

William: “I’m very well, thank you.  How are you?”

Random Mozambican:  “I am well, thank you.  And you?”

William: “I am also well!” **Gives the Thumbs Up**

No joke, it’s like this every single time. 

My goal here is to eventually blend in (read: Integrate) and not have everyone look at me like I’m a freak.  That’ll happen eventually as I become a more familiar site in the community, but right now, everything I do is stil very, very weird to these people.  I recognize this, yet for some reason I still try and limit the amount of strange I exude on a daily basis.  It’s funny how hesitant I am to do things like hang my underware up on the clothes line, go running, wear shorts, or take my shirt off while working in the yard (though in my defense, that last one might be a cultural faux-pas) ].  In reality, this is probably the perfect time to take advantage of the fact that everything I do is crazy, just throw caution to the wind, and do stuff.  Do anything!

So, here’s to a New Year full of American normalcy and Mozambican oddities.  Normal to me, but strange to them. I just hope no one steals my underware…

The Downside of Mango Season

Mangos.  I love mangoes.  They are delicious; they are pretty; they make my trash smell great, and they are plentiful this time of year.  It is literally raining mangos right now, so much so that I have to be careful to watch where I’m walking for fear of getting bruised by a juicy mango falling from its tree.

It’s mostly fun and games, but like most things in life, there is a tradeoff:  Moscas, and lots of them. Mangoes are like crack to flies.  And it’s not just a few, they come in swarms.  There are flies anywhere and everywhere.  Don’t get me wrong, they totally suck, but it’s oddly amusing seeing the places you find flies.

Word on the street is that they’ll start to go away soon, but I guess that also means that mangoes will too.  With my new-found love of mangos, I’m not sure I’ve ever felt so conflicted about something.

I keep this bowl full and my screen door closed. Because that's what people who love mangoes do.

Cabo Delgado Mangoes (one of the many varieties), in all their stringy goodness.

I’m Secure!

Finally!  After what seemed like the job that wouldn’t end, it finally ended.  I, Future Physics Professor William, now have security bars in place on all my windows and doors.  And they are actually pretty  nice….that is, as aesthetically pleasing as metal bars that have been soldered to windows and doors can be. Here are some pictures.

The curtains are a work in progress...I've got some peacocks I want to put up instead.  Stay tuned America...for Peacocks

Look at this Vicious Beast!

Here is a snake pic, for your viewing pleasure.

I found out that it is a  Dipsadoboa Flavida, or Cross-Barred Tree Snake.

Look at this monster!

Why is that corner moving?

Why?  Obviously it’s because there’s a snake coiled up there, that’s why.

Pretty standard Monday evening.  Did a little typing, organized some paperwork, cooked me some dinner, battled a snake that had set up camp in my bathroom, took a shower, ate my dinner, watched a show.  Yep, nothing too eventful.

But that snake.  Oh boy, did that suck. It had been particularly hot today, and after spending almost every minute of it sweating, all I wanted to do was take a shower before sitting down to enjoy some curry fried rice. Mozambique apparently had other plans for me though, and instead decided that this would be an ideal time to fight my first snake.  I don’t have a light that works in my bathroom yet, so when I walked in, I was confused why the corner I had just cleaned the day before looked a little funny.  Why is it dark-colored and moving?  I quickly drew the conclusion that probably meant there was some sort of animal there.  Probably a karma snake.  I was really hoping to be wrong.  I had hoped it was just a strand of the mop I had been using to clean earlier, left behind to scare me later one.  Not so much. 

Sure enough, coiled up in the corner of my bathroom was a snake, both beautiful and petrifying.  Not the biggest specimen I’ve ever encountered, but this vicious beast was probably half a meter in length and up there on my list of biggest snakes I’ve ever seen that haven’t been in a book or behind glass (I haven’t seen many).  But it’s dead now. 

Had to do it, there were no other feasible options.  So, armed with a jagged metal pole (the broken off handle of what was at one point in time a mop), enxada (Mozambican hoe-ing tool) and a bucket, I went to work.  I didn’t really want to kill it, but at this point I wasn’t sure how else to get rid of it.  He was a climber, so putting him in a topless bucket just wouldn’t do.  My hands are already blistered enough from my attempts at farming the other day, I don’t need a snakebite on there too to compliment the one that looks like Japan.  Because I was lacking the proper tools and not sure what kind of snake it was, it had to be offed. You know…for science.

(Well, isn’t this night turning out to be splendid.  Right after I finished typing that sentence, I went to go plug in my fan. Wouldn’t you know it, but it doesn’t work because one of the prong broke off.  And when I went to go turn on my makeshift light fixture hanging in my living room, would you know it but it start smoking and then blew out.  Now it’s sweltering, dark and quiet.  In a house where I just murdered a snake. Tonight just isn’t my night.)

So, other than my midnight battle with a potentially venomous serpent, the day was pretty good.  I spent the morning wandering through the market, talking with various people.  I conversed with countless Mozambicans, met a guy from Somalia, another from London, and another who had moved here from Pakistan.  Later, I even found out that I’m not as America-deprived as I thought, and that there are three real-live American families living here in Montepuez.  They’re a group of missionaries, most of whom have been here for about nine years now.  The three families live on a complex that’s dotted with mango trees and various buildings they constructed to protect them from the elements (and house snakes).  They also happen to be wonderful and handy people and said that if I ever get a little homesick, I have a little piece of America at my disposal a few klicks down the road.

Recently, they brought in two new American’s to teach their nine children in a beautiful mud-brick and mortar school house that they also just built. Just like us, these two post-grads are on a two-year contract, though their situation is a bit different than ours.  They teach four or five hours each week-day morning, and then have the afternoons and weekends to do as they please.  Furthermore, the families have set them up with a fully-equipped, and gorgeous home on the complex. 

Today, Kara and Rebecca (the two teachers) were kinda enough to invite Anna and I over for a pizza lunch and some good old fashioned English conversation.  After stuffing our faces with pizza, apples slices, carrots and Kool-Aid, they introduced us to a few of the missionaries (Chad, Allen, and Rachel), showed us around and sent us on our way.

All in all, karma snakes aside, it’s a pretty incredible day.

Will:1, Guy Who Tried to Pickpocket Me: 0

So there I was, hot, sweaty, and caught in the middle of an ever-growing traffic jam of people clogging one of the main arteries used for entering and exiting our labyrinth of a central market. I didn’t understand why at the time, but the guy in front of me just decided to randomly stop walking, demorar (waste time, delay) right there in the middle of it all and thus cause this whole mess. As walls of people began to close in on me, I felt a rush of adrenaline fueled by cultural misunderstanding of what the hell this guy was doing. The crowd quickly grew as my heart started beating faster. Suddenly, I felt a hand where it shouldn’t be. My perimeter had been breached. Just like that, I went from naïve American, to naïve American caught in an oh-so-common pick-pocket trap. Following the security breach though, I went through a hulk-essque transformation to become a pissed off, defensive, and arm swinging naïve American fighting his way out of an oh-so-common pick-pocket trap. With cat-like reflexes that only a person with severe paranoia could possess, I managed to slap the guys hand and give him a nice hard look right through to his evil, yet obviously impoverished and desperate soul right before high-tailing it out of there and escaping with all of my pocket contents still contained. That was close.

The whole situation was pretty stupid on my part, and in reality, I got pretty lucky. I wasn’t carrying much, but I did have my blackberry in the pocket the man went for, and a few bucks in the other. I didn’t even think twice about having those things in my easily accessible side-pockets prior to entering the notorious thief haven that is our Central Market. We’d been warned before, countless times actually, by our Safety and Security Advisor Alfredo. Throughout the ten weeks of PST, he did his best to engrain in us that here in Mozambique, people will prey on even the slightest security vulnerability. Unfortunately, I think for most trainees (myself included), that message has a tendency to go in one ear and out the other. It’s not because we don’t believe him, and it’s certainly not because he’s wrong. In my case, I think it was more so just having a certain over-confidence and naivety, while thinking, “Oh, that won’t happen to me.” Well, I was wrong. It can, and usually will happen to everyone.

What’s important is that I learned something today. I need to be smarter here, and always consider the necessary precautions. I dodged a bullet today, but there are still others in the chamber. Now, I just need to work on finding an appropriate balance between living life with a certain level of paranoia while still sustaining genuine faith in humanity.

In the end, I emerged unscathed, so it was indeed a bom dia. I thwarted my first pick-pocketer, and though it may seem pretty strange to be excited about it, I think it’s important to recognize the small victories and consequential life lessons. So, I celebrated with some bolo (CAKE!).

Securing the Perimeter. And Beans.

Why are you still here?  Why isn’t this stupid job done yet?  There isn’t any power, why do we have to sit and wait for it to return. Why can’t you just come tomorrow instead?! Why won’t you let me leave my house, damnit!?  Why are you eating all my food?  Why must I cook for you too?  Why must you continually ask me to add more salt to an already over-salted dish? Why, why, WHY! 

I’ve got cabin fever, and I’m about two kilopascals away from cracking.  I’ve spent the last four days stuck within the confines of my house, unable to leave because there are two guys cutting and welding metal rebar on my front porch with the end goal of setting me up with a nice new set of security grates for my windows and doors.  They started on Friday.  That was also the first day Mozambican Culture gave me a little smack to the face before removing some of the contents of my wallet.  No, I didn’t get robbed; at least I don’t think I did (how ironic/cliché would that be though…the guys installing the security device end up ripping you off).  Turns out, if you hire someone to do work for you, and they are there during a meal, you need to provide them with food.  Usually, this wouldn’t be an issue, but it caught me totally off guard.  Not only do I not have much in my pantry (I just moved in!), but I have no idea how to cook what I do have.  

Fortunately for me, my amazing site-mate Anna taught me how to whip up a quick batch of fried rice the day before, so when the guys told me they were hungry and needed to feed them, I went to work.  I didn’t have some of the things I needed, so I decided to make a curry fried rice instead by substituting curry powder for soy sauce and ginger. Turned out to be half decent, and I think they liked it.  They took seconds, so I’m counting that one as a victory.  If only the next day had gone as well.

I should have taken it as a sign when Taje, my neighbor and colleague, stopped by early in the moring on day two to say something about the power.  I usually don’t understand what he’s saying to me, so I just nodded, slapped his hand and did the Mozambican handshake-thumb snap, smiled and repeated “Sim, sim!”  Turns out, he was trying to tell me that there wasn’t any power, but the guys who were working on my grates were still going to come.  Around 7:00 or 7:30, they showed up on their motorcycle dressed and ready to work.  They said something along the lines of, “Yeah, don’t worry, this happens in Montepuez a lot.  Either the power will come back on in five minutes, or it won’t come back on until tomorrow.  Or maybe it’ll come on in an hour or two.  Doesn’t matter, we have nothing better to do so we are going to hang around your house and wait.  Also, you need to feed us again.”

So we waited.  And we waited.  And then we waited some more.  We sat around all morning, waiting for the power to return.  First we waited outside.  Then we moved inside to my couches.  Then one of the guys took a nap on my couch which the other tried to decipher dated copies of the New Yorker.  He told me he didn’t understand what anything said, but he liked the ads.  It was grueling, and it was hot.  On the bright side though, this gave me a great opportunity to practice my Portuguese, and while we were sitting there waiting for what felt like an infinite number of house, we conversed as best we could.

When lunch time rolled around, I got to work.  I decided to be a bit adventurous that day and experiment with beans. This was actually gonna be my first time making beans.  Ever.  I had soaked them the night before, with the bright idea to try and follow a recipe I found in one of the various cook books/notepads laying around my house.  It sounded good to me, and I had most of the ingredients, so it seemed like a win-win situation.  Not quite.  I didn’t think that the finished product was actually that bad, but the Mozambicans were not happy.  “The beans need to be cooked more.” One said.  “It needs more salt.” Said the other.  “Why did you cook it together with the rice?” they both asked.  Because that’s what the recipe said to do dude, that’s why.  I wasn’t actually terrible, but they aren’t huge fans of spicy, and I guess they didn’t have a taste for cumin.  Either way, they told me that they wanted to teach me to make beans like a Mozambican, so I decided this sounded awesome and told them I was down like a bean-cooking clown.  They didn’t get it.  So instead I told them that this sounded like an amazing opportunity to gain a cultural culinary perspective from two members of the community that I will be spending the next two year of my life living with.  They didn’t understand that either.  So, I just told them yeah, let’s do it.  That worked.

We finished eating around 2pm, and they decided that after nearly seven hours of waiting, they were gonna call it a day.  Then they left.  Then, at 2:02pm, the power came back on.  Figures.  Didn’t matter though.  It seemed that I would finally have some time to leave my godforsaken house and run some errands, so I was happy.  I desperately needed to go to the market and restock on supplies.

I finished up washing the dishes and then got my bag ready to head up to meet Anna for some shopping.  About five minutes into my walk, it started to rain.  Hard rain.  I ducked under a random tin-roofed veranda for a little, hoping to wait out the storm.  I’d already waited 7 hours today, what was a little more.  It never stopped raining.  I would have just sucked it up and walked anyway, but I wasn’t even half a klick into my 4km trek to the market.  After about 25 minutes, I ran home to seek shelter in the dirty, metal shard scattered confines of my home.

The next day the guys showed up bright and early to start working again.  Nothing too eventful on Day 3, but Anna decided to join us for lunch.  We didn’t end up doing the bean thing as I forgot to soak them.  No problem, because the pasta I drowned in olive oil suited them just fine. 

Day 4 came and went with a bang.  Well, it was more like there was banging all throughout the day.  Banging on Metal bars, banging on pots and pans, banging our forks and knives on the table as we eagerly waited for our food to be served…  I was excited to learn about Mozambican bean-cooking.  It was interesting, but not as unique as I was hoping it to be.  Pretty standard stuff, except they didn’t want to soak the beans at all.  Instead, we started cooking them at 8am, and just let them boil for three or four hours.  We mixed in tomatoes, onions, peppers, and garlic before adding a ton of salt.  Rice was put in towards the end, and then a one point, one of the guys asked for a plastic bag that he then put into the pot, spreading it out over the bean-rice amalgamation.  Still not sure what it was supposed to do, but when he was sticking the thing in there, he told me it was to “Tampar.”  Meh.  Too bad tampar didn’t mean make things taste better, because even with the approximately 1 kilogram of salt that we added, the dish came out pretty bland. My beans were better.

One Week Down, 103 to Go.

Well, today marks the one week anniversary of my arrival in Montepuez, and it’s been a busy week to say the least. Aside from the unpacking, cleaning, cooking, shopping, and settling-in that I’ve been doing, I’ve also been working at school, exploring the market, and attempting to integrate as best I can. It’s cliché to say (and it’s possible that I’ve already used this before, so apologies for the potential repetition), but every day is like taking a ride on an emotional rollercoaster. I’m fairly excited for things to calm down and have a little normalcy return to life. Until then though, I’ll try my best to keep enjoying the ride. Now, on to the highlights…

Every day thus far I’ve gotten out of bed, only to be overwhelmed by crashing waves of terror, excitement, abandonment, relief, laziness and satisfaction. There’s a little bit of homesickness as well as some serious yearning for the things I left behind (air-conditioning is a big one), but those thoughts are trumped by the quick realization that I’ve finally made it. I’m here. And I have a ton of work to do.

I arrived at site last Saturday, and how appropriate that it was also the first night of Chanukah (I think…). What I arrived to was quite possibly the best gift I have ever received: a house with electricity and running water that is nothing short of fantastic. There’s a special title – more of a joke actually – about Volunteers who have electricity and running water. They are part of the Posh Corps. I’m now officially a part of that group; and in Mozambique none the less, one of the poorest countries in the world. Go figure. What’s more is that Chris, the volunteer that I’m replacing at site, left me a ton to work with.

This was completely unexpected. Prior to arriving, I had the opportunity to talk with Chris a few times on the phone. During one of our conversations, he told me that his house, now my house, had recently been broken into while he was away from site, and some of his stuff had been stolen. He mentioned that both the fridge and mattress had been taken, so I kind of assumed the worst, and figured that I was going to be arriving to a practically empty house. When I got here though, I discovered that was far from the truth. Although there was no replacement fridge, there was a brand new twin-size foam mattress present and beckoning me to start working on my own personal body groove (it’s only been a week and I’ve already got a body mold…). In addition to that, I’ve got art on the walls, a diverse collection of time-worn spices, some kitchen supplies (I HAVE A WOK!), a mini-oven with two burners on top (this thing is pretty janky though and may or may not work), a collection of books, and a ton of little knick-knacks for me to play with (broken electronics, tools, schools supplies, cards games, etc.). Happy Chanukah to me.

There are three other cookie-cutter duplexes flanking my house, and all border a high cinderblock wall that forms the eastern boundary of the school complex. Each house is equipped with running water and electricity. The water is cold (well, more like luke-warm), but being as that it’s about 194 degrees outside, I’ve come to relish its mildly-frigid feel. The electrical distribution system here works just the same as it did in Namaacha. I’ve got a meter on the front of my house that shows me a balance of Kilowatt-Hours. As I use up energy, the meter goes down, and when I need a refill, I have to head into town and wait in line with the rest of the locals to buy credit from a store-front (hold your horses people, it’s not as exciting as I’m making it sound).

My new house, a quaint little concrete duplex, was built as part of the city’s new expansion zone. With it, they built a brand spankin’ new secondary school (Escola Secondaria 15 de Outubro, where I’ll be teaching) complete with ten classrooms, two dormitories, a fully equipped cafeteria and kitchen, water tower, teacher lounge, office, library, infirmary, science lab, and computer lab. Yeah…computer lab. I haven’t gotten to go in it yet, but from peeking in the window, it looks like they have a pretty decent set-up. Things are pretty quiet over at school right now, as they are currently in the middle of the Mozambican equivalent to the American summer break until mid-January when things will get started again. In the meantime, all the teachers are working on grading tests and preparing for the new school year.

I spent a few days over at school earlier this week. I wanted to meet some of my new colleagues, as well as my new bosses (there is a huge political hierarchy of directors in Mozambican schools, but I’ll save that information for another post when I understand it all better). What I can tell you is that the big head-honcho – or Chefe, a synonymous term they like to use a to here – is the School Director; and my Director seems great. He was excited to have me around, which made me feel the same way. Apparently, Monetpuez is desperate for Physics teachers, so I’m helping to fill a huge void that would otherwise be empty.

It didn’t take long for him to put me to work too. The other physics teacher needed help putting together the 11th and 12th grade curriculums this year, so I sat down with him and did what I could (not much, since I don’t know what these students need to learn, nor do I know how to write a curriculum). I spent most of the time just sitting there learning new words and gawking at some of the things the government (which determines what students will learn each year) wants us to teach these kids. Some of these subjects include waves (standard), mechanics (standard), thermodynamics (semi-standard), electromagnetism (also semi-standard), and a little unit on nuclear physics (whack). Not only do I have to learn how to speak Portuguese, but now I need to learn to speak Portuguese and then use it to eloquently describe the process of nuclear fission. This is gonna be an interesting year.

Other Highlights:

• For the past few days I’ve been under a self-imposed house arrest as two Mozambicans work to put security bars on all of my windows and doors. It’s taking forever and making my house dirty, but it’ll be worth it when I can leave my windows open at night! Oh yeah, the protection sounds pretty cool too.
• Holy shit it’s hot here.
• Holy shit, when it rains here, it really rains. Kinda like the rain in Florida. It just shows up out of nowhere. Storms for a while (sometimes five minutes, sometimes two hours), and then disappears again. The difference is that things dry up really quick around here.

Road Trippin’

It’s about 120 degrees inside the chapa, and aside from having a long metal skewer jammed through my torso, I feel like one of those rotisserie chickens you find at the grocery store. I’m caked in a marinade of sweat and dust, dehydrated and sleep-deprived.  Now, I’m roasting.  It’s a great combination.

There are ten of us in this car: four volunteers, four professors, a motorista and a cobrador.  It’s not surprise that we’re packed in like sardines, though they did let us sit three to a row instead of four so long as we had some sort of item resting on out lap.  My legs went numb long ago; my ass followed suit soon after.  We’ve been sitting in the Chapa for about four hours, and little do I know it, but we still have another four to go. Luggage fills the back seat from the floor to the ceiling and grocery bags holding everything from vinegar to toilet paper have been crammed into any remaining voids.  Four big black trunks, four large cardboard boxes and four humongous two-year bags form a mountain on the roof that’s capped off with four and a half bicycles.  All of it’s being secured to the luggage rack with about a mile and a half of rope, and there’s not a doubt in my mind that if we turn to hard, we’re gonna tip over.  Oddly, I’m calmed by the thought of being able to use this example to help demonstrate the concept of Center of Gravity to my students when I start teaching Physics in a few months.

We’ve already dropped off Jackie, another volunteer, at some road-side town in Nampula and are now slowly making our way north to Cabo Delgado, the last province before Tanzania.

We make a few other stops along the way, errands for the various Africans in our car: the motorista wants to buy cashews, another guy needs credit for his phone, one of the professors is bored and wants to buy beer.  The Cashew Excursion was my favorite, followed closely by the stop for mangos. Both were totally reminiscent of the train stops along the Kazakh Steppe.  As soon as we pulled over to the side of the road, an army of criancas dressed in tattered clothing and selling fire-roasted cashews engulfed our car, each trying to show us why their tray of was superior.  The prices were just as shocking as the taste.  Maybe it was because I haven’t eaten anything since 5am, but at this point in the journey, I’d eat roasted goat meat if it had been purchased on the side of the road and served to me in a plastic bag with raw onions (and then I did…).  I’ll tell you what though, I could get used to paying next to nothing to live off a diet of mangos and cashews…if my stomach would let me.

Around 3pm, we roll into Mariri, a small village 17km off the highway (an African highway….so it was mostly a road that goes one-way in each direction, or one that’s been under construction for three or four years and just a dirt road next to a road that in the process of being paved), to drop off two more volunteers (Elizabeth and Jamie).  They end up getting right back in the car after storing their bags in the director’s house as aside from a secondary school and a beautiful view, there isn’t much else there.  Wait, there’s a lake; can’t forget the lake.  Anyways, they need supplies and Montepuez is the place to get them.  They are planning on staying with Anna, my site-mate (someone who lives in the same city/town/village, but isn’t necessarily your roommate), for the weekend and returning to site in a few days with their hands full.

After removing a couple bags and bikes, the roof mountain is now more of a hill and we are that much more aerodynamic.  The motorist takes advantage of the decrease in wind resistance by putting the pedal to the floor.  We have 80 more klicks to go as soon as we hit the highway and for the first time all trip, we’re speeding.  It feels great. Next stop, home.

The conversation on the way to Montepuez is an interesting one. We begin talking about monkeys.  Do they have them in Cabo? Yes.  Are there a lot? Maybe.  Do they eat them here?  No.  I jokingly mention that I want one as a pet.  My mindset quickly changes to a more serious nature as I start to get lost in thought while pondering how I’ve actually always wanted to have a real, live pet monkey in real life, and how I might actually be able to fulfill that fantasy in Africa.  I’m brought back to reality when the conversation turns to elephants.  Do they have them in Cabo? Yes.  Are there a lot? Maybe.  Do them eat them? No.  I know that I can’t keep an elephant as a pet, (that’s not to say I don’t want one too, but I’m turned-off by how high-maintenance they seem to be), so my mind doesn’t wander in that direction.  Instead, I sit and listen.  The director sitting next to me starts talking about how about once a year, an elephant will wander into the city.  He also mentions that usually this results in someone dying.  Sad story yes, but on the other hand, everyone dies at some point (except for Keith), and that seems like a pretty interesting way to go out.  Not for me though; I’m keeping my finger’s crossed that when my day comes, it’ll incorporate an explosion, a feast, world record accomplishment, a certificate, and old age.  Mainly the old age part.

As we enter the district of Montepuez (districts are the Mozambican equivalent to counties in the states), I focus back on the surrounding and begin to let it all sink in.  This land, with its sweltering heat, short, craggy mountains, and endless networks of coconut trees that reach high above the houses, is my new home.  I will work here.  I will eat here.  I will play here.  And, I will sweat here all the while…all the time. Because it’s hot.  Did I mention that yet?

Homestay Celebration

I think I’ve already mentioned a few times that our days in Namaacha are numbered.  We’ve only got a few more left, and are starting the process of wrapping things up here.  Yesterday, we had a big homestay celebration for all the trainees and families.  Every family was allowed to bring four people (including one trainee) to the party. Each family was presented with a personalized certificate (Mozambicans love certificates) acknowledging their generosity and thanking them for their patience with us.  The Mães had spent all morning (starting at 4am) cooking food for the 300 people who were coming, including Peace Corps staff members.  There was chicken, pork, beef, goat, mystery meat and fish; salad, matapa, xima, rice, and fried potatoes; there were five different kinds of vegetable salads and two humongous cakes too.  And much to the Mozambicans’ delight, there was also a whole lot of booze; four kegs of beer complimented by a couple cases of wine.  Mozambicans love alcohol, often times too much.  But that’s a topic for a whole different post. 

The party was alright.  Well, I’m not giving it the credit it deserves. It was great, and aside from a bunch of teenagers crashing the party and drinking all the beer, I think everyone had a pretty good time.  But something didn’t feel right, and the whole thing just rubbed me the wrong way.  I can’t figure out why, but for the first time in ten weeks, homesickness finally hit me.  

I stood there watching the presentation, looking around at all the other volunteers sitting, surrounded by their host families, and all I could think about was how badly I wanted to be sharing this moment with my real family.  I don’t think I have ever wanted a hug from my sisters so badly in my life.  I was excited to be giving the certificate to my host parents, but it would have been great to have had my American Mom and Dad to be there watching it too.  Their absence just didn’t feel right; there was a lingering guilt making me feeling like I was cheating on my real family or something.

Armando Sigauque and Maria de Luz (Not Pictured, but still very important: Octavio, Gerson (Mandinho), Sosanah, Dulcidio, and Fina; and that crazy pilot Mister Valerio too).