Living the Life

Friday October 23rd, 2009
Today we met up with our language groups to cook several traditional Mozambican dishes for lunch. It took a while and we didn’t really know what we were doing most of the time, but luckily our host mom’s were there to help us along (it was actually sort of funny seeing them constantly bumping heads over the different ways to prepare these dishes that each of them make on a daily basis in a slightly different manner). I don’t know if I’d be able to prepare any of the food by myself tomorrow if I tried, much less in 3 months or so down the road, but it was a lot of fun and gave me hope that I MIGHT be able to survive when cooking for myself after I leave my host family at the end of Pre-Service Training.


My language group taking a second to pose for a picture. Look at the beautiful mountain scenery in the background.

My host mom and me taking a moment to laugh together after preparing the food.

We cooked three sauces (Matapa, Cove, and Cacana) and prepared two base carbs (Xima and Rice), which are covered with your sauce of choice. I had already eaten all these foods before, but this was the first time that I was able to try them in a short span of time and really compare their tastes, ingredients, and consistencies. Even though I liked them all, I discovered that I liked Matapa the best (for now), although I think that Abóbora is pretty similar and I might like that more (we didn’t fix that sauce this time).

The three sauces we prepared all had crushed peanuts and coconut milk in them, but are distinguished according to the final main ingredient. Their ingredients look like the following:

Matapa: ground Matapa leaves, peanuts, coconut milk, onion, tomato, salt, garlic, and stock chicken powder
Cove: diced Cove leaves, peanuts, coconut milk, onion, tomato, salt, and stock chicken powder
Cacana: Cacana leaves, peanuts, coconut milk, salt, and stock chicken powder


Matt grinding up some peanuts with the help of his host mom.

Me striking a pose as I'm getting ready to break open a coconut by smashing it against a big rock.

As you can tell, I relish the small successes... even in grating out a coconut.

To clarify, Xima is a staple Mozambican food that is loved by all here, minus a lot of PC volunteers (Note - I prefer rice, but I don’t dislike Xima). To completely describe its majesty would take a Mozambican a short novel, but my best attempt is that Xima is a finely ground cornmeal mix poured into hot water and stirred until it produces a thick, paste-like final product that sits heavy in your stomach… for hours. Although I’ve stuck with utensils thus far, my whole family eats xima (and the sauce that accompanies it) with their hands and my host mom is adamant that it just tastes better that way (sounds like some advice from Ronak, eh?).

Anyways, near the end of the cooking session we were adding tomatoes and onions to the Cove and Matapa, but while I was cutting one of the onions I let the knife slip and slightly cut my left thumb. It seems like all is good, but I don’t have any antibiotic ointment, so I’ll just have to keep it as clean as possible and hope that everything will be okay for the weekend at least.


My friend Yohko with the entire lunch spread laid out behind her.

Chowing down on some Xima and Matapa.

The entire lunch crew with all the PC trainees and their host family members

After the 4 servings of lunch (!!!) and then cleaning up our mess, we celebrated the end of the week by going out to “Palusha’s”, a bar/hangout spot near the edge of the town to grab some drinks. It was pretty fun to see so many PCTs together at once without having any training to worry about, not to mention the fact that the venue is pretty balla’ for Mozambican standards. Not only does it have a pool, it even has a flushing, western-style toilet!

I am excited looking forward to going back to Palusha’s and I know I won’t have to wait long because on Halloween the PCTs are going back there to party it up American style (minus the skanky costumes)! I don’t know exactly what my costume will be yet, but an earlier leader is the Chiquita banana woman. I’ll keep you all posted…

Saturday October 24th, 2009
So today was a pretty big day… It started off with a written Portuguese exam that went… mas ou menos. I finished up early, came home, washed my clothes, and hung them up to dry (I’m getting better at it) before eating lunch with the fam. After lunch, my host family and I went to Namaacha’s flea market, called Shoprite by the locals (which is a Mozambican chain equivalent to Wal-Mart). At the market I bought two capulanas to make into t-shirts and my brothers bought a bunch of lightly worn clothes with English words on them (which kept me wondering if they had possibly come from some household in the US and if so, how cool it would be to “know their stories”). Before leaving Shoprite my mom made sure we bought 4 live chickens so that I would get plenty of practice at killing and preparing them to eat. We had to carry them home from Shoprite and, even though chickens weren’t that heavy, they get to be quite a burden after walking for over a mile with them. Today was a really hot day and against my better judgment I took my brother up on his offer to buy me a freezypop from a streetside vendor on the way home from Shoprite. The cherry-flavored ice tasted/felt amazing while it lasted, but I’m not sure if I’ll still think it was worth it when I am plagued with diarrhea for the next 2 weeks (btw, thank you for the immodium Mariah)!

When we finally got home from Shoprite we had to wait around for 20-30 minutes before we could kill the chickens while we heated up some water on the stove. It gave us a nice chance to relax after the long walk home. The chickens were dazed from being carried most of the way by their feet and just sat there, unaware of what lay ahead. When the time finally came around to do the dirty work I had already had a long time to try and rationalize the killing of the animals and felt a lot more at peace with it than I thought I would have… weird, I dunno… After having actually killed the chickens, I can definitely see why so many spiritual rituals have developed in so many cultures around the world regarding the killing of animals for food and/or sacrifices. To say the least, it is a very intense moment to realize that you are taking the life of another being!

I’m constantly going back in forth with this in my mind and I’m not entirely sure where I stand on it. I think that when I get back to the US I could very easily become a vegetarian, but I’m not sure if my stance is even that firm on the matter. I think that killing of animals in the US is largely unnecessary because there are plenty of options for other nutritional substitutes and it is such a waste of resources compared to other sources of nutrition. Before killing the chickens today I guess I reasoned that it’s important to the diet of the Mozambican family because they have very limited options to select a variety of food and I know that my family in particular really doesn’t have many other sources of protein in their regular diet besides the occasional meat.

At the time I guess I felt I had it figured out pretty well in my head because my brother showed me how to kill a chicken and after the first one I think that he was surprised when he saw that I was willing to continue with the other three. One thing going through my head was that since I’d be eating the other three chickens at some point during my homestay here, I’d be lying to myself by saying that I didn’t really participate in their killings just because I wasn’t the one actually using the knife. After the decapitation, I had to hold the chicken’s main body still for several moments before it stopped moving. At that point we brought out the piping hot water we had to wait for initially and dunked the chicken’s body in to it to loosen the feathers from the skin so they could easily be plucked. After all the feathers and skin on the feet were removed, I had to cut open the chicken’s belly to remove the organs, being careful not to accidentally cut into the intestines and let feces spill out (Note - I was doing all this with my left thumb having a gash on it from yesterday’s cooking lesson that I was supposed to keeping clean. Oh well! It’s PC Africa!). Finally, the feet were cut off at the knees and at that point the chicken pretty much looked like something you’d find at Publix. Yummy!

Actually, as I finish typing this up, I’m about to go in to the dining room and guess what we’ll be having for dinner… you guessed it! Talk to you later.

One Love,
Michael

Sunday October 25, 2009
I went to church again today and since I had already done my laundry on Saturday I was able to relax around the house until we went to the service at 10:30. The majority of the service, as normal, was in Shangana, but a lot of it was translated for me by a young man visiting from South Africa who speaks some of the local dialect and a good bit of English.

The topic of the sermon was “Jesus Cristo é Salvador” (Jesus Christ is the Savior). The pastor put a lot of emphasis on the miracles performed by Jesus during his ministry (ie the woman who was a hemophiliac and the blind man who were both healed by faith in Jesus). Although a lot of the scripture was translated very literally (with the emphasis being that faith can heal you physical ailments more so than the way I usually think of it healing my emotional/spiritual issues), not all of the metaphorical language was lost. The pastor briefly talked about how our faith in Jesus can heal our souls, but really harped on the potential for physical improvements. Dovetailing perfectly with the sermon, there was a time for people who were sick or injured to come forward and have hands placed on them while being prayed for (this always happens, but was particularly notable because of the sermon topic today). I think that the sermon and the prayerful healing afterward at least somewhat reflects the health status of the average person in Mozambique. People who are sick here really do rely on small miracles to make it through because oftentimes getting treatment is too expensive (even though a lot of the actual treatment is free, someone still has to pay for transportation and other incidentals involved with traveling to receive care).

Over the past 3+ weeks during PST, guest lecturers been telling us a lot about the health issues that people in Mozambique are facing and I’ll spend the next paragraph giving you all some background just so you can get a sense of the situation. It is estimated that 1.7 million people, or 16% of the population, are living with HIV/AIDS in Mozambique. However, this is not evenly distributed throughout the country because there are actually provinces where nearly 3 out of every 10 people are infected (crazy huh?!). In addition to HIV/AIDS, the prevalence of Malaria is known to be extremely high, but is hard to pinpoint exactly because many people who have been previously infected by the parasite are asymptomatic carriers. That said, a study of children under 5 (a population that has little immunity to the parasite) showed that about 65% of the population in the northern region were infected. In addition to these two issues, general health is hard to maintain because malnutrition and adequate access to sanitary a water source are also huge concerns.

That all said, I can just begin to understand how someone feels in this country based on their health status. As I said earlier, I cut my hand on Friday and continued onward the next day by killing several chickens and removing their insides with an open wound on my finger. I am pretty sure that I’ll be able to get medicine to treat the wound, but I can tell it’s already become slightly infected even though I’ve been very vigilant about washing my hands over the past several days (how sad is it that I’m comparing the cut on my hand to Malaria… pathetic, I know).

Anyways, the point is that I’ve grown up in the U.S. covered under my dad’s insurance plan and have never felt in danger of not being able to receive treatment for even little injuries, much less big ones. Now I find myself in a country where huge public health concerns are prevalent and some people, even relatively wealthy families, might not be able to get treatment simply because of lack of health infrastructure and staff.

Even though my church here in Namaacha seems like it can’t get any farther away from what I’m used to in the states, it is crucial for me to appreciate the different draws to Christianity/religion due to people’s perspective. I have only just begun to adjust my perspective from that of college-educated, white, middleclass American and thus I know my opinion will continue to change with time. Taking a step back and thinking about it, the fact that Jesus is able to appeal to so many people on so many different levels is incredible. Although we in the U.S. may tend to focus on Jesus’ philosophical appeal, it’s important to note how Jesus provided his followers with their basic needs as well (curing illnesses and providing food/drink) and how that is just as important, if not more, depending on what your current needs are.

If I don’t get another blog up before Halloween, have a great time everyone and be safe (especially if you are going up to Jacksonville for the game… Go Gators!).

One Love,
Michael

Check out the new photos of my family:

My host family!

My host family... with me in it!