A Gator in Mozambique: Week 2 Training Update!

October 12th, 2009
I just kicked my brother Lissaio out of the room because I was exhausted and about to pass out, but then I went outside really quickly to brush my teeth and got a second wind. So here I am now, sitting down to type out a few thoughts before nodding off for the night…

So after all the hype, our chapa ride from Namaacha to Maputo on Saturday morning turned out to be slightly anticlimactic in the end. All 65 Peace Corps volunteers ended up at the same spot, at the same time to take some chapas into the city. So instead of us being broken up into our small language groups and mixed intermittently with Mozambicans, we ended up completely filling 4 chapas (still sitting 4-deep on 3-deep seats mind you!), but we didn’t get the authentic chapa experience for sure. I mean, there wasn’t even a single person standing! That said, we all had a lot of fun on the ride into the city. In fact, as we were entering the city, I led the whole chapa in singing “Wagon Wheel” and “Country Roads” and I couldn’t help but think of the times I’ve sang those songs with you all back at home while strumming my guitar… sigh…

Anyways! The day in Maputo was a success for one reason: I got a cell phone! In case you want to call me sometime via skype, give me a shout at 82-294-8201. I don’t know the country code, but I think that you can look it up on Wikipedia and/or I think Skype will automatically figure it out for you if you tell it to call Mozambique (I’ve been told it only costs you 16 cents a minute from Skype). Other than coming back to Namaacha with a cell phone, the day in Maputo wasn’t too great. It rained the whole time we were there and we had a lot problems at the cell phone shop and ended up wasting a lot of time. Another highlight, though, was the food (nod yes now if you feel like that last sentence reminded you of every entry on Ricky’s Europe blog ;-)). We went to a pizza place for lunch and even though the pizza isn’t comparable to Hungry Howie’s… it was more than sufficient to meet my needs!

Following up the busy day in Maputo, yesterday was the first “free day” of the weekend since we actually “had” to go to the city on Saturday. Sunday morning church not starting till 11am in the States is usually a great opportunity to sleep in. Not so here in Mozambique! My entire family was awake and working outside the house by 6am and I finally realized that God also really wanted me out of bed when the neighbor’s rooster meandered over and decided to make camp under my window at 6:30am. When I finally stumbled outside my house on my way to the bathroom, I barely had time to say “Bom Dia” to my family before my mother jumped in front of me and informed me that she was going to be teaching me how to wash my clothes this morning. Still dazed and sleepy, I had to think quickly to struggle to communicate to her that I HAD to go to the bathroom. While lingering in the bathroom, I hoped that she had gone and continued her morning routine and that I could possibly get away from doing my laundry at that moment, but when I came out a few minutes later I saw upon exiting the bathroom that she had been patiently waiting… like a lion ready to pounce! I’m not going to go into the process of how to wash clothes by hand (it actually pretty complicated and a lot harder than it looks), but I’ll say this: after all the pain that it took to get the dirt stains out of my clothes(literally my knuckles rubbed raw), I now know why people really didn’t want to get their clothes dirty back in the day… it’s a LOT of work to get stains out of clothes… especially white ones! On that note, why did I bring so many white shirts again? GAH!

Finally, after washing my clothes, taking a quick shower, eating breakfast, and ironing my clothes, I made it to church just in time for the start of the service. The service was pretty quick compared to the previous’ week, just as beautiful with the songs but with less of an incomprehensible sermon in Shangana. Sitting in my seat and enjoying the service, everything was going smoothly until I realized that as the service was coming to an end the pastor was, in fact, asking me to close the service with a prayer (luckily I got to do it in English). I’m not going to lie… The prayer started pretty rocky and anyone who could speak English probably would have been confused by the haphazardness of it, but in the eyes of the congregation the prayer went off without a hitch and everyone seemed happy with my contribution even though I’m not sure if they understood more than a few words here and there… Note to self: never make a foreign exchange student say a prayer for the congregation at his second church service, even if it is in his own language… it’s just awkward!

The church service got out a little after 12 and I still had to go home to eat lunch with my family so I knew that there was no way I’d be able to meet up with some of my PC friends who were taking advantage of the free day by trekking out to Namaacha’s legended waterfall around noon. I got a text from another friend, though, who was trying to get together a game of Frisbee at 2pm and, even though my host mom and several people from the church had invited me to go to a local church coral competition that afternoon, I make the executive decision to get some exercise and play some Frisbee instead. The one big problem being that only two people showed up to play Frisbee, including me! So here I am, out in the middle of a field, missing out on the awesome trek to the waterfalls, ditching my mom’s coral competition, and looking like someone who is really out of place, decked out in gator gear, with a Frisbee in hand. Even though it was well after the time the event was supposed to start, I could hear people in the distance warming up for the coral competition and felt an extreme sense of anguish at the idea of missing out on my host mother’s singing. And at that moment, I realized that I should make it a point to take better advantage of the cultural opportunities which present themselves to me while here in Mozambique with Peace Corps. With only a few words of goodbye to my fellow Frisbee friend, I jolted for my house to change my clothes to go to my mom’s competition and as it turned out, the coral competition had been delayed so that I only missed the very opening act. In fact, in the end, the whole afternoon worked out for the best because not only was I able to make the concert, but the lack of rainfall had turned the waterfall into more of a trickle and left all the trekkers relatively deflated when returning home… That said, I know that I really want to go to the waterfall later on once in starts raining and I’ll make sure to post some pictures!

October 13th, 2009
Today I went hiking along the Mozambique-Swaziland border with my language group and afterward, feeling inspired, I decided to take out my camera at home tonight and snap a few shots of my brothers and sisters. Check the out the photos below!