The Karma Spider

Today is Friday, and what better way to celebrate Friday than by going to the bar and de-stressing over a big bottle of beer that only costs you about a dollar-fifty.  Here in Namaacha, we have a few options in terms of drinking establishments.  They range from the woman selling beer on the corner out of her cooler, the white flag-waving Baraka that sells sawdust moonshine, or the expensive hotel that doesn’t seem to take kindly to our types around here (PC Trainees, that is).  And then there’s Javier’s. 

 

Javier’s is the local libation location. There, you can get anything from shots of Johnny Walker Black Label to local Mozambican beer (there are three types of Mozambican beer: Laurentina, Manica, and 2M).  Maybe I should clarify, by anything, I actually mean not much.  There’s booze, and then there’s samosas.  That’s about it.  

These Street Samosas are to diarrhea for. Get it?  Peace Corps joke.

The owner of the bar has his American friends call him James, and he’s actually a really nice guy.  Apparently, sometimes he even hosts volunteers in his own house. Anyways, if a Peace Corps Trainee is looking for some sort of social interaction (in English that is), Javier’s is the place to go.  Between the hours of 4pm and 8pm, the bar tends to draw a decent sized crowd of the English-speaking 20-somethings.

Observe: the outside of Javier's.

Young Money.

Back to the events of today...after a little convincing from a friend, I decided to pay Javier’s a visit after the Chefe Meeting (the meeting for language group leaders) to toss a few back with my new ex-patriot family. I’ve been before, but have never stayed too late.  I usually have to shower before dinner, and did not want to make my Mai mad by showing up too late tonight.  Still, I ended up getting home a little later than I think she would have liked me too.  She said something when I walked in, and I tried explaining that I was a little late because I had to walk some friends home.  My Mai has a reputation for being a tough cookie (more on her some other time), and need less to say, I’m pretty sure she knew I was not only lying, but pleasantly-toasted even before I walked in the door. She told me the water for my shower was ready, and I should go tomar banho (“shower”).  Cue the Karma Spider.

Prior to bathing, I thought I’d pay the latrine a visit. Since day one, I’ve said to myself that it’s inevitable I will one day lose something down that black hole.  That day was today.  I was setting up to aim when all of a sudden, my soap container popped out of my pocket and fell right through..Shit.  Literally.  I couldn’t help but laugh at myself.  Figures.  Guess I’m lucky it wasn’t my key’s.  That would be a disaster, mainly because I don’t think there is a second set.

After spending 15 second deeply grieving the lose of my soap container, I went to take my bucket bath. 

Well, I can now confirm that the humongous spider I once thought was real, then thought was a figment of my imagination, is in fact most definitely real.  And today, it spent a fair amount of time watching me bath. Just as I finished pouring water over myself, trying to make up for the fact that I had no soap with which to scrub, I turned around, only to find myself in a stare down with an elephant-sized arachnid. If I had been wearing pants, I would have peed them.  Africa 1, Will 0. Again, not sure what else to do in this situation, I just laughed. Oh, and I also got out of thesr as fast as I could.

After putting on some clothing, I reported my findings to my family and told them I needed a picture (at this point, they are well aware that I’m a little tweaked by humongous bugs and think its hilarious to laugh at my fear). With the support of my host brother, I went to get my proof.

Public Enemy #1.

In honor of this my new stalker, I’ve decided to start an entirely new section of my blog, simply titled: This is Africa.  In this section, which you can navigate to using the menu bar at the top of the blog, you will find a collection of all the jerks (and some of the other animals, insects, etc. that don’t suck) that I come across while getting to know Mozambique on a very intimate level.  It’ll be a fun way to show you what I encounter while romping around the bush.  Think of it like this, my mental anguish is your viewing pleasure!

So yeah, that’s my experience with instant karma today.  I think I’ll try and start getting home earlier from now on.

Sad Mama.

The last few days have been a little somber around here.  Two days ago, my Pai knocked on my door right around 6am to tell me that he was headed down to Maputo.  Octavio’s father (My Pai’s son-in-law) was sick and headed to the hospital.  Octavio was already in Maputo, and had been for a few days.  

It was a strange feeling around the house while the big man was gone. I could definitely sense that my Mai was uneasy as well and she clearly had a lot on her mind.  I’m sure there was more they were telling me that got lost in translation.

Octavio came back today and I ran into him at home after I got back from school.  He was in the kitchen talking with my Mai.  I welcomed him back, asked how he was and how his dad was doing.  There had been some improvement reported, and although he was still in the hospital, he was slowly making progress with his stomach issues. Content with the news, I headed inside to get started on some homework.

Right as I sat down for dinner, Octavio came in and told me there was some more bad news. Apparently they had just received a telephone call that my Mai’s Sobrino (her 34 year old niece), had just died.  I didn’t even know she was sick.  Nearly right after he told me, my Mai walked in with her sister and another friend and all sat down in the couch.  Each was more distraught than the next, my Mai having tears pouring out of her eyes.  It was a little bit of an awkward moment, since our living room is also our kitchen, and I had just filled my plate up with food.  I tried to hold off from eating out of respect for the family, but my Mai ordered me to start (as she typically does when I try to wait for others to serve themselves). 

After I was done, she asked me to come sit in the chair by her.  I hesitantly walked over to the chair and sat down.  She then explained to me that she would be heading to Maputo tomorrow, and she didn’t know how long she’d be away for.  She told me that Susannah, Octavio’s sister, would be cooking me meals.  I tried to use my broken Portuguese to explain that that was not necessary and I could do it myself, but she insisted.  “Eu posso cozinhar” I repeated, but she continued to decline my offer.   

When all was said and done, I had won breakfast rights, but Susannah would be cooking my other meals.  I asked my Mai if there was anything I could do to help the family while she was gone.  I told her I’d work the farm if need be and could even sell the bananas for them, but again, she declined.  Just the offer seemed to make her happy though, and her and her friends got quite a laugh out of that.  She then told her friends the story of how a few before, I had insisted that she let me buy some banana’s off of her (she sells them out front of our house at a rate of 3 for 5 mets…a steal!).  This made them laugh even harder. I was pretty content that my cultural idiocy was able to bring a smile to their once subdued faces.

Don't really have a better way to end this.  It's depressing no matter which way you look at it.  Life in Africa is different for a lot of reasons.  I imagine that one of the most significant differences is the presence of death and how much more frequently it is encountered. I like Africa, and I look forward to service here, but I do not look forward to that.

Some Pictures for Ya.

Here's some pictures from Namaacha!

Marcado.

Playing Catch with some kids in front of the Namaacha Secondary School.

Abandoned Church behind the school.

View from My Host Family's back yard. The left half of this chain of mountains is Swaziland, the other half is Moz.

American Idiot

Sometimes I think my host family looks at me like I’m an idiot.  I can't blame them, it kind of makes sense.  To them, I’m completely inept at performing even the simplest of the tasks that they do every day: washing my clothing by hand; using a latrine; showering in a bucket; carrying water; farming; starting a charcoal stove; hanging clothing out to dry; and filtering water.  All of these things are every day occurrences to these people.  To me, and potentially to the majority of American's, these are things we don't even think about much less have any necessity to do. On the other hand though, sometimes it goes both ways.  

On my first day in Namaacha, my Mai and Pai spent about five minutes trying figure out how to open the juice box they wanted to give me for a snack.  To me, that's something that's second nature, sometimes I've been doing since pre-school. Insert straw through foil hole at top of box.  To them though, it was like trying to solve a new york times crossword puzzle.  They had no idea.  

At first, the juice box situation was pretty humorous.  But it got me thinking.  All these tasks I need to learn to survive here, it's kind of like I'm looking at a juice box for the first time too and trying to figure it out. Meanwhile, they're probably sitting there laughing even harder than I was.  I know i would be.

Week 1: Complete

Feelings after completing the first week of training:

-Portuguese is not as hard as I thought.  I’m still learning, and still very much a beginner, but overall the learning style is very familiar to I learning any other romance language which has helped out a ton.

-I love these people.  Seriously, it’s like every single new person I meet just makes me happier and happier with my decision to do this.  Although we all have similar motivations for joining the Peace Corps, everyone has their own unique backstory with such interesting details.  I’m not sure what types of people I expected to encounter, but it certainly wasn’t anything like the people I’ve met.  Wow.

-I have discovered that I can adequately wash, soap, then rinse my entire body, with about 4 liters of water.  That’s like using two of the big bottles of Coke you can get back in the states, and if those bottles were filled with water that was the same color as Coke.

-About that huge spider I mentioned earlier that I saw in the shower on day one...well, I guess it’s kinda possible that might have been a hallucination.  Apparently, visual hallucinations are a side effect of the Malaria Pills they give us.  That and lucid night mares.  FUN!

-I just went to the bathroom and almost stepped on a 5 inch long millipede.  Still getting used to seeing those…

Day Ten...ish

Day ten… ish. I can’t believe that I’ve already been in Mozambique for over a week.  It’s been a while since I’ve written anything, but that’s mostly due to our busy training schedule as well as a substantial fear of blowing out my electronics this early by trying to charge them with an unfamiliar plug. Well, I’ve experimented and found that aside from the AC adapter on my computer heating up a whole lot (I think due to the 220 voltage passing through it?), I think I’m safe for the most part.   Probably not going to try and push my luck though and I’ll continue to not leave things plugged in overnight.

Anyways…last night was awesome.  Why was it so awesome you ask?  Well, for starters, I got my phone to work (I have a Mozambican Phone Number!  E-mail me if you want it!) and spent 30 minutes on the phone with my mom and Val. That’s great and all, but it’s what was said during the conversation that has me freaking out about a million miles away.  Last night, I found out that the Orioles clinched a berth in the playoffs.  Not last place; THE PLAYOFFS!  Nearly a decade and a half I’ve been waiting for them to have a half-decent season, and my patience finally pays off when I move half-way across the globe.  Figures.  At least I have text messages and a motivated (and equally obsessed) sister to send me updates. Keep ‘em coming dude!

Now to report on things that my mom will actually care about...personal updates and the other reason that today was so good.

These past few days I’ve been a little nervous about learning the language. We don’t have much time before they start expecting us to be able to converse, only about 4 weeks.  Today though, my confidence hit an all-time high.  I feel like I’m making significant improvements every day and think that a huge part of that is due to my host family and language teacher, Horacio being so patient and willing to work with me and my fellow compatriots. Poor Horacio though.  My language group is practically starting from less than scratch (he has to un-teach us Spanish), so we aren’t exactly easy to handle.  It’s been a process, but a fun one for sure. 

Speaking of Language Class, I’ll tell you a little more about it.  Here’s how it all works:  There are three main groups of volunteers here.  Everyone is a teacher, but the groups are split-up by the subject you are supposed to teach.  There are about 40 English Teachers, 11 Math Teachers and about 10 Science Teachers.  Each group of teachers is then assigned to a Barrio (read: neighborhood) in Namaacha, our Training Village for Pre-Service Training (PST).  English is living in Barrio 25, Science is in Barrio A, and Math is in Barrio Fronteira.  Each volunteer is living with a host family somewhere in their respective Barrio.  In addition to living there, the groups also take language and technical courses in their neighborhoods as well.  For the most part, English teacher spend most of their training time with the other English teacher, science with other science teachers, and math with other math teachers.  On a side note, once a week we all meet up at one location for cross-cultural classes and shots.  Peace Corps loves to dole out shots like they were candy. I wish they candy.

Anyways, within the respective disciplines, we are then split into smaller language groups according to our current comprehension of Portuguese.  We have two groups for the Math Teachers.  One group is for those who know some Portuguese, and the other group is for the rookies. I’m a rookie, and there are four other rookies in the group with me. 

When it’s time for language class – which happens to be all the time right now, since the first four weeks of PST are pretty much focused on getting you to learn the language – everyone in the language group congregates at one of the group members house’s.  We then begin our learning in that persons respective home or shaded yard, depending on the weather. The small classes make things a whole lot more personalized, and therefore a whole lot easier.  The setting itself, well, it’s amazing.  I sit and relax in a plastic chair in the shade, learning Portuguese from a native speaker, while enjoying a classroom environment that far exceeds anything I’ve ever seen in the states. No white-washed walls here (well, not when we are outside of the house at least…but then again, even in the house they aren’t very white any more), only panoramic vistas of green, rolling mountains dotted with the abodes of families who have resided here for hundreds of years. Needless to say, withal the day-dreaming I do, sometimes it’s hard to concentrate on the Portuguese lesson.

So, in conclusion...that is why I am struggling with language.  Because of Namaacha.