HERE'S TO 365 DAYS

Of filling up water buckets at the crack of dawn
Of hand washing clothes on the back lawn
Of boiling kettles water for hot bucket baths
Of walking to school to teach kids maths
Of uncomfortable rides in overcrowded cars
Of eating xima and pork at local bars
Of setting small fires to burn my own trash
Of waiting in long lines to withdraw cash

Of nodding through conversations without knowing what's said
Of becoming friends with the ladies who sell me bread
Of eating countless meals of rice and beans
Of 80 degree days being cold enough for jeans
Of wearing a white bata that can never stay clean
Of trying to turn down proposals without seeming mean
Of redefining my identity when I meet someone new
Of explaining that Americans can look like me too

Of mosquitos attacking every inch of my skin
Of candlelit nights drinking grape juice and gin
Of living in a house with a ceiling of bats
Of hanging out with children on dusty straw mats
Of disgusting diarrhea that never ends
Of missing weddings at home of my best friends
Of breaking into my house when I forget my key
Of dropping my sweater into puddles of pee

Of PCV friends who can lift sour moods
Of international music festivals with delicious foods
Of finishing a marathon and coming in last
Of traveling without plans but having a blast
Of king sized beds in vacation dream homes
Of miles of sandy, white beaches to roam
Of private boat rides across a blue lagoon
Of swimming under the light of the moon

Of people fawning over my silky black hair
Of learning to dance with Mozambican flair
Of picking out fabrics for custom-made dresses
Of cooking new foods and making big messes
Of invitations to homes from people I've just met
Of realizing how much my body can sweat
Of making new friends while hitching a ride
Of neighborhood kids shouting my name with pride

Of learning new languages and trying new things
Of the excitement of not knowing what each day brings
Of days where I've laughed and days where I've cried
Of 52 weeks on this emotional roller coaster ride

Here's to a year.

First Trimester ✅

Hi friends, I am sitting in a cold air conditioned hotel room writing this much-delayed post.  Like most Peace Corps volunteers sometime in their service, I have come down with some type of virus/flu/rash which has luckily landed me with some extra hotel room time in the capitol city while PCMO monitors my symptoms. This has given me some time to sit down and gather my thoughts on my last few months of service, here are some highlights:

ON TEACHING

After completing my first trimester of teaching, I first and foremost must say a HUGE thank you to all of my former teachers, and give huge props to all the current teachers out there.  I've always known that teaching is not an easy job, but after experiencing it myself, I have a newfound respect for teachers who can put up with students' crazy antics on a day to day basis.  Teaching math in Mozambique has been an extremely challenging job.  Math is a difficult subject, so students lie,  copy, and cheat their way through class so they do not have to learn the difficult material.  I started the year teaching only 9th grade math - and started my students with a review of the basic multiplication times table.  The students had so much new material to learn for the year but such a weak basis for matematics and critical thinking skills. My teaching schedule was undetermined and not even finalized teaching until over a month into the school year. At one point the school received a new math teacher and made a new schedule in which I had to give up the 3 turmas (classroom of students) that I had been teaching in order to go and teach different turmas.  As a volunteer, I do not have to work a minimum number of hours, but Mozambican teachers must teach at least 24 hours to receive their salary. With the schedule moves, I was forced to leave certain turmas where I had already grown comfortable with students and students had become accustomed to my broken Portuguese, to start over with brand new students like it was day one. This was not my favorite experience... But I certainly learned a lot!

A few students from my 9th grade math class,
causally posing with their
"cemetery for broken desks and chairs"

I settled with 2 turmas of 9^th grade math, taught extra lessons during 8^th and 10^th grade “Estudio obligatorio”, or obligatory study hall periods, and spent most of my extra time tutoring students in math in our little tiny library during my spare time. I used a more hands-on teaching approach that made me popular with most of the students - we played math games on the chalkboard, did flash-card multiplication practice, and practiced methods of problem solving as frequently as possible during class. I wish I could say I changed their worlds and every single one of them and they all became brilliant students… but class sizes are too big, students miss school frequently for countless reasons, and life conditions of their lives simply exist that work against their success.  At the end of the first trimester, all students in Mozambique sit through 5 days of provincial government issued final exams.  In one of my turmas of 9^th grade students, only 2 out of 64 students passed this exam (passing = 10/20 points). Am I a bad teacher? Possibly. Do these students need to study more? Definitely. Needless to say, I have my work cut out for me next trimester.

ON BEING ALONE BUT NEVER REALLY ALONE

As I’ve mentioned before, I live alone in a small concrete house, in a row of teacher housing on the school grounds of my site mate’s school.  People often ask me, “Aren’t you afraid of living alone? Don’t you get lonely being by yourself?”  The concept of “alone time” is uncommon in Mozambique.  Living in such a centralized public space, it is expected of me to have my door open when I am home... which invites curious neighbors, bored neighborhood crianças, and needy students from all around to stop by for unannounced visits. 

A typical Saturday afternoon on my living room floor

At first I loved the visits – to chat, learn, and spend time with the people of my community.  My neighbors love to gossip, the children who visit love to sit with my coloring books and color, and students from both my school and the school where I’m living like to stop by to ask curious questions about my life.  But soon word got around that the foreign professa had coloring books with colored pencils, real popcorn, and offered extra math tutoring to students of any grade level right on her front porch.  The visits became non-stop.  The most common visits were from crianças – I would never describe myself as “someone who likes kids”, but like many Peace Corps volunteers, I have found that my most consistent and persistent house guests have been these little humans under the age of 10.  On weekends, they show up at my door shortly after sunrise “Com Licensa, Tia Peggggg, estás a dormir?” (Excuse me, Aunt Peggy, are you sleeping?) – Which of course I am not at this point.  So they stand outside on my porch (not so patiently screaming) until I let them in.  It's tiring to have these little guys constantly visiting, but the happiness on their faces is infectious, and they are so proud when they completed a drawing that they ask to hang it up on my wall. I now have an entire wall dedicated to the artwork of these criancas.

A few of my favorite little running buddies

Over the last 5 months, my community has slowly gotten used to my presence.   When I go for runs in the morning, the same early risers on the road that used to stare at me like a zoo animal will now smile and greet me with “Bom Dia”; small children who at first crossed the road to be far away from me now join me for short distances of my run on their daily walk to school.  The few local cobradors, or money collectors on buses, no longer ask me if I am lost and now know which stop I need to get off at.  I have also had strangers stop on the street stop and back up their car to ask if I am the new teacher at the secondary school.  This can be a little creepy and unsettling, but I have found most people to be just genuinely curious and want to just stop and talk to the foreign girl walking down the street.

Sometimes this creepiness has its benefits.  After living the 2 hottest months of the year without energia, or electricity, because the school said they would “get around” to finding someone to fix my electrical box, I stopped and chatted with 2 men in the neighborhood. They claimed to be electricians, one even said he had a degree in electrical engineering.  I was skeptical, and a general rule of thumb I do not give strange men on the street my phone number, and definitely do not invite them into my house, but at this rate I was desperate to buy a fan to provide some relief from the non-ending heat. So I invited these men to my house to come check out my faulty electrical box and called my site mate over to hang out to witness the process. Miraculously, 15 minutes later, I HAD ENERGIA! I am still not sure what these men did to rig up the old wires to work, I was just thankful to see the lightbulb in my living room lit for the first time ever.

So while I may live alone, I rarely have moments to myself. If I ever need help with anything at all, there is always someone here to lend a helping hand. Strangers I meet on the street help me out with my greatest housing dilemmas, Neighbors will help out when they see that I am struggling, and students visiting my house will help me clean when they see that I haven't gotten around to it (many not so subtly suggest that I hire a maid to help me clean since my house is rarely up to Mozambican cleanliness standards).

ON BEING FAR AWAY FROM HOME

Friends who made "Stick Peggys" to ensure I could be there for all the
"big moments" even when I couldn't physically be there

As I write this post, many of my closest friends home in the United States are together at a bridal shower. I video chatted with a few of them at the beginning of the event and found myself bursting into tears at the sight and sound of all of their voices. If I was in the United States right now, I would be at said bridal shower, pulling my own share of bridesmaid duties while drinking wine and eating cupcakes. Instead I am alone in a hotel room eating cold leftovers and hoping that whatever virus gave me a full body rash goes away soon so that PCMO might let me leave my hotel and send me back to my humid hot concrete house with a gaggle of criancas at the door. The reality of these contrasts can be depressing at times, but I always knew that being away from home for 2 years meant missing a lot of "big moments" in the lives of my family and friends back home.

To make up for these kinds missed moments back home, I have made new friends and created new families amongst fellow PCVs, to celebrate big life moments with here. Check out a few below!

Tourist life

Drinking life

Beach life

City life

FIRST WEEK AS A PCV

Today is my 7^th full day as a Peace Corps Volunteer.

These last few weeks have been crazy and activity packed but now I am finally in my own house, in my own little space enjoying the independence that I didn’t realized I had missed until now. I’m sitting in the corner of my living room on a little wooden bench that undoubtedly used to be part of a classroom desk/chair combo, and using a paint covered chair as table as to write this blog post.  I miss the comfy padded furniture of my host family’s house, and delicious carb-filled meals, but here I can sit around wearing nothing but a tank top and shorts (showing  skin above the knees is frowned upon for women here), and eating Nik Naks (a brand South African cheetos) for lunch.  Not exactly picturesque adulthood life, but it's my first week on my own... my diet will hopefully improve.

Fellow PCTs and I in front of our newly dug garden.

Phase 3, or my final few weeks of training, passed in a whirlwind. It has been well over a month since my last blog update, but the last few weeks of training were jam packed with new training sessions, Peace Corps activities, and time spent with my fellow PCT friends.  We attended a technical session where we learned how to permagarden, in other words how to make land fertile and which crops to plant where and when.  We had a chores competition where we competed against each other to see who had best mastered Mozambican house chores like smashing peanuts into dust. We had ‘model school’ where we had the opportunity to practice our teaching skills at local high schools as guest lecturers.  And finally we had were local language classes where learned the local Bantu language of our future community.  I learned xangana/changana – the most widely spoken language of Maputo province. Unlike Portuguese, this language is unlike any language I had ever spoken before, so it was incredibly difficult.  After 2 weeks I can say I confidently learned "Lixile"– good morning and "kanimambu" – Thank you.

A few members of my host family and I,
all dressed up for the wedding.

I also had the opportunity to attend my first Mozambican wedding during my last few weeks of training. Mozambican wedding are HUGE affairs – the wedding had hundreds of people!  My Mae and several other Maes from the community cooked all night to prepare food for the wedding reception – they did not sleep!   The wedding consisted of a church ceremony (which I missed due to the Peace Corps chores competition), followed by a car parade of the newlyweds and select family and friends all around town, and finally then the reception – dinner (with a buffet line of about 30 different dishes), presentation of gifts (song and dance usually accompany the gift), and a D.J. and dancing (including Mozambican versions of line dances). Waiters walked around throughout the night with crates full of beers and wines – a new bottle of beer appeared before me every time I finished the previous one.  It was quite a night of celebration!

Thanksgiving Dinner

Throughout the last weeks of training, fellow PCTs and I grew closer and our sense of family bond strengthened.  We spent our time after technical sessions together passear-ing (strolling) around the village, spent evenings cooking American foods for our host families to try, and weekends at the local baraccas (bars) sharing stories and making memories.  We got together on the morning of November 9th to crowd around a 20-inch TV and to watch as the results of the United States Presidential Election come in live on CNN. I arrived in the morning, some other volunteers started watching around midnight when polls closed on the east coast. After we got over our initial shock, we spent time spent time figuring out how to discuss these results to our Mozambican host families who had tuned into American election updates every night during their evening news. My Mae told me me I did not need to get up early the day after the election to check the results because it was obvious that "A Senhora Clinton vai ganhar" - Mrs. Clinton is going to win. Well, my Mae was wrong. In the days following the election, I had conversations in which I had to explain how the American election process works, how votes are counted, and what my feelings are about the new President-elect.

Picture perfect before Peace Corps Prom.

On a different and happier note, my PCT family and I had the opportunity to celebrate and American holiday together! Thanksgiving holiday fell during our last week of training, and our extremely generous country director hosted Thanksgiving dinner for all of us at his house in Maputo city.  His family, Peace Corps staff, and members of the U.S. Embassy community prepared delicious turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, pumpkin pie, and all of the American Thanksgiving dinner must-haves. We ate until we could not eat anymore, just as we would have if we were home in the U.S

The following day, we celebrated together with another American tradition - PROM.  For our Moz 27 Peace Corps Prom, food and music was organized, prom dates were found, and many people bought/rented clothes from the local outdoor market (my rented dress looked eerily similar to my real high school senior prom dress), or wore clothes made from local capulana fabric.  The day after prom, we had official end of training despidida, or going away party/feast with all of our host families.  My Mae was incredibly cute and stood up in front of the crowd to talk about her experience with her Peace Corps daughter. She was so proud of me (and my newfound Portuguese language skills!).  I was so lucky to have had her and her family with me during my entire training process.

My host family - wearing the matching capulana fabric
along with everyone of our neighborhood (Kala Kala)

The celebrations were wonderful and bittersweet, as it really felt like we were children graduating from high school.  We were all filled with excitement to go off on our own, anxious to be away from the only friends we have known during our entire education (training) process, and sad leave our loving host families who had taught us so many important things about life in Mozmabique.  

With our Peace Corps Country Director, in front of the
Mozambican Ministry of Education building

On November 30, my fellow trainees and I traveled to Maputo city together for our official Swear-In Ceremony (Graduation), held inside the Ministry of Education building.  The 64 of us wore clothes made from matching capulana fabric, raised our right hands and took the oath that made us official Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs)! We did it! 

Following the ceremony, we all took a crazy amount of pictures togehter, said our thank-yous and good-byes to the wonderful Peace Corps staff and trainers who had been with us from Day 1, and spent our last day drinking and ordering pizzas poolside at a fancy hotel. The entire experience was amazing and a little surreal. Reality did not hit until the next day, when a range of emotions that I didn’t know I had began to set in. I wished my newfound best friends good luck and said tearful good-byes to those traveling to the Central and Northern regions of the country. We likely will not see each other until our Peace Corps Mid-Service Conference over a year from now.

Performing a step routine during our Swear-In Ceremony.
If you could like the whole video, check out
Peace CorpsMozambique's Facebook page.

My site mate and I had the shortest distance to travel, so we were  the first ones of our group to arrive at site the morning of December 1.  We arrived at on school grounds and checked out our new houses.  Our identical houses each
contain a large living room with a sink/kitchen area, a bedroom, and an indoor bathroom complete with a toilet, urinal, shower, and sink.  The school had placed  one table and 2 chairs into each of our houses. Unfortunately, that was the only furniture provided.  And unfortunately, my house needed (and still needs) a bit of work… the electricity did not work (the circuits of my house tem problemas), the sink drains were clogged (to the point where a plumber will be need), windows lacked glass/screens/security bars (this has since been resolved), and stains and small insects covered every possible surface. 

But, it's home. Compared to many of my fellow volunteers out in the mato whose entire villages do not have electricity, who Mae houses do not have sinks that could possibly be clogged, whose huts of straw do not have windows cut out….my house is a chiquy Peace Corps Volunteer house.  There is no running water, but there is a spigot in the backyard has running water every morning for me to collect water to use to flush my toilet and take my baths.  The front door (facing the school) and the backdoor (facing small personal gardens) have secure locks. It's no 5-star resort, but pouco a pouco - all of the flaws will be fixed and it will feel like home. 

I've given you all a relatively positive outlook of everything, because I am a glass half full kind of person. But if you’re curious about how this week really went for me, keep reading. 

I have been here for 7 days. These have been a long 7 days.

Feel free to laugh, cry, scream, or just chuckle. 

That’s how I felt about this week.

Day 1:

• Arrive at site and talk the pedalogogical director at the school into driving us in his truck to the villa (or downtown) area of Boane
• Buy a bright red mattress covered in happy elephants
• Buy a gas stove and gas tank (unfortunately, the parts to connect said stove to tank were out of stock, we are told to return in a few days)
• Buy basic household supplies (pots, pans, candles, matches, etc) at a store with ‘good prices’. Turns out the store is owned by local Chinese people (it’s a small world filled with billions of Chinese people), and I used my best combination of Mandarin/Portuguese to explain to the confused cashier what an English-speaking Chinese-looking girl is doing shopping in Boane.
• Stop by my Phase 2 host family’s house to say hello and they generously feed me delicious dinner when I tell them my stove cannot yet function.
• Learn that a ceramic mug is the best candleholder to use to avoid burning fingers on hot candlewax

Day 2:

• Painter comes to paint my walls bright, white, and shiny. I sleep inhaling fresh paint fumes
• Neighbors lend me large water jugs and show me where/how I can fill them up with water
• Peace Corps staff drops off my 2 suitcases, large cardboard box, and Peace Corps issued plastic trunk.
• Dig out all of my sheets/capulanas to hang as curtains so I can have some privacy
• Buy food in the villa and cook it at my neighbor’s house because neither my sitemate nor I have procured stove parts yet. 

Day 3:

• Welders arrive to put steel bars are put onto my back door and window.  They do not have the tools to remove the few existing screens on the window so they burn large gaping holes into them.  Mosquitoes enter and decide my blood is delicious, they invite all of their friends – flies and cockroaches, to come hang out with me in my house.
• I scrub all of the mystery stains off the kitchen tiled walls
• I unpack all of the snacks sent to me by my friends and try my best to exercise control and not eat them all at once.

Day 4:

• I go for my first run, carpenter arrives while I am gone and cannot get into my house to measure windows to fit them for screens and glass.
• The school brings me a bench and an extra table welded together by the welder the day before.
•  Energia, or electricity, is out all day in the district for no apparent reason. The neighbor’s blaring stereos are silent and I cannot charge my phone anywhere.
• Our gracious neighbor invites my site mate and I to cook/eat dinner with her.  We cook a feast of pasta, rice, chicken liver, sardines, and salad.  We eat via lantern and candlelight.

Day 5:

• Carpenter takes apart windows to put in screens to keep out the bugs, but realizes the glass he bought for the windows is the wrong size (even though he took measurements the day before). Glass for my windows does not get installed
• Carpenter installs a handle to my bedroom door
• The gas station obtains parts for one stove.  We install the stove at my site mate’s house since he has electricity and overhead lighting to use while cooking

Day 6:

•  I go for a 5AM run (before the heat sets in), and a friendly young man on a bicycle comes up to chat. He asks if we can be friends, or exercising buddies, or maybe more than friends. I tell him I like to run alone in the mornings. He follows me for 2 more miles until he gets bored.
• I return home and discover district’s water supply had run low and the water spigot stopped spouting water so I cannot fill up my jugs.  I skip my daily bath (after running, so gross) and save my remaining water from the day before for toilet flushing.
• I go to the villa to visit the Shoprite grocery store to buy 3 large 5 liter bottles to drink and cook with. 
•  The gas station in the villa finally has parts for me to connect my gas stove to my gas tank.
• I stop at a nice restaurant with AC to enjoy a meal of strong coffee and a grilled egg/cheese sandwich because I am too lazy to return home and put together my stove to cook.
• Carpenter returns to my house with tools needed to cut the glass to fit into the window frames, and installs locks on all of my windows
• I put together my gas stove and cook my first meal in my house – FRIED RICE with eggs, carrots, and onions  – because rice makes home feel more like home.  

Day 7:

•  I discover that the school has a latrine (hole in the ground bathroom) for students.  I bring my toilet paper use the latrine to avoid having to flush my toilet with my non-existent water.
• I finally unpack my 2 year bag (packed in August and stored at the Peace Corps office in Maputo until last week) and discover the 20 deodorants and 10 lbs worth of Pantene shampoo and conditioner carefully wrapped in clothes that I had forgotten that I packed.  It’s like Christmas came early. So many new things!
• The school’s wonderful pedagogical director drives our large water jugs to a nearby river (about 5km away) to fill them up with water for us to use until the spigot water gets turned on after the next rain storm (which my weather app tells me will happen later this week).
• I finish this blog post at my site mate's house because my house still does not have power to charge any electronics. 

Hope you have all enjoyed Reading about my day to day life. The school year here just ended (it's summertime, seasons here are opposite from the seasons in America ), and the next school year does not start until late January.  I have nothing but time on my hands now and I would love you hear from all of you! Letters or packages would be a treat.

Peggy Zhang, PCV

Corpo da Paz/U.S. Peace Corps

Avenida Zimbabwe 345, 

C.P. 4398

Maputo - MOZAMBIQUE

FYI mailing costs to Mozambique are a bit pricey so if you love me but your bank account does not shoot me a message here, via e-mail: pxzhang1015@gmail.com, or Whatsapp message / call me at my Mozambican number: +258 870887159.

Until next time.

PHASE 2, HERE WE GO

It's now Phase 2 of my training process, after 6 weeks together in one village, all Moz 27s were sent out visit our future sites. The reality of what life as a Peace Corps volunteer will really be like has set in, and it truly has been (and will be) a completely different experience for everyone.

On the Wednesday before we left for Phase 2, we had site placement announcements. The Peace Corps staff members drew a huge map of Mozambique on the local basketball court, divided into its 10 provinces. They handed each trainee a sealed envelope, and at the same time, 65 of us tore open our envelopes to find out where we would be living for the next 2 years. As we walked to our spot on the giant map, there were squeals of joy from those who got placed exactly where they wanted, cries of distain from best friends who were placed on opposite sides of the country, and silent looks of shock from those who received utterly unexpected placements. I think I experienced all of those emotions at once when I read about my placement.

I have been placed as a math teacher at a complete secondary school (grades 8-12), which is exactly what I had hoped for. The school is located on the outskirts of the municipality of Boane, Maputo province, not far from where we had Phase 1 training. If you google Boane, you'll find that it's just 40 km away from Maputo City, the capitol city of Mozambique. (Maputo City borders, but is not party of Maputo province, the same way Washington D.C. borders, but is not part of Virginia or Maryland).

Fellow Maputo province teachers

With just one stuffy chapa ride, I can travel from my site to the capitol city and have access to almost anything that I could possibly need. Chapas, or small buses crammed full with too many people, are the main form of public transport here in Mozambique if you are going somewhere that is too far to walk (think NYC subway at rush hour... Except it's always rush hour). The second most common form of probably boleia, or hitchhiking. Boleias can be given by someone you know who just happens to be driving down the road, or a stranger who just happens to be traveling the same direction as you. This is something I probably would not do in the United States, but I have found that most people here are kind and willing to help out a foreign stranger.

From my future home to my school, it is about a 1km walk, so I will probably walk along the road hoping a fellow teacher will give me a boleia to save me from walking in the heat. There are 2 secondary schools in my community, and I will have a site mate who will be teaching at the other school. We will be living as neighbors on his school compound in the teacher housing units (my school does not have teacher housing). I am also extremely fortunate because many houses in our community have electricity (including mine) and spigots which spout running water each day for a few hours in the morning (or sometimes a little more or less time depending on how recently it has rained / how full the water reserves are).

Teacher housing: One of these units will soon be mine!

When I first received my placement, I was honestly a little disappointed that I would not have the opportunity to get to know a new part of the country. Mozambique is divided into 3 general regions: Northern, Central, and Southern, each with their own local languages and cultural traditions. I was sad to see many of my friends placed in the far North or Central part of the country, because I will probably only see them on rare occasions (like mandatory Peace Corps conferences). My site is about an hour away from our Phase 1 training village. However I am excited that my site mate and I going to be opening our site, which means we will be the first Peace Corps teachers to teach at our respective schools.
22 members of our Moz 27 group were placed in the Southern part of the country and we have already started to make plans to see each other as much as possible. For the first part of Phase 2, the Southern trainees had a conference at a hotel in Maputo City with our future supervisors. For a few days, we got to enjoy city life, and most importantly, take hot showers with running water!

At this conference we discussed logistics for the next few weeks, and I met my school director (or school principal), who is also my host dad during Phase 2. He and his wife and 3 children welcomed me into their beautiful home as soon as I arrived into their community.

My room at my new host family's house.
The fan in the corner has been the best part.

They have the cutest quintal, or yard, filled with green plants and gardens of fruit/vegetables. There are 2 dogs, one cat, and about  a dozen ducks who also live here. There is also an empregada, or a housekeeper, who comes everyday during the week. She takes care of the children while my host mom and dad are at work, does a lot of the housework, and most importantly has taught me necessary lessons about life here in my community ("You can go buy bread at that stand over there", "You need to put more soap in that water if you want your clothes to be clean", and "You cannot go to school with your bag that dirty, teachers should always appear clean!")

 

My school director's / host family's house for Phase 2.

I have now been here for over a week, and have had the opportunity to observe many classes taught by my future colleagues at school. The students of course, have been extremely curious about the new foreign professora wandering around their school. About a decade ago, Peace Corps Mozambique had PST trainings here in this community, but for most of my high school students who were young children back then, they do not remember this. My school has over 1,000 students, 9 classrooms, and about 30 teachers. There are 3 sessions: morning, afternoon, and night. Here in Mozambique, teachers do not have their own classroom. Each turma, or group of students, is assigned a classroom and the teachers rotate between the classroom. Turmas at my school are divided by grade level (i.e. all 8th graders in one turma, 9th, 10th etc), and usually have about 50 students.

Students lined up to sing the National Anthem before school begins

In addition to observing classes, a few of my colleagues have let me teach class for them! I gave 5 math lessons (the same topic) to 5 different 8th grade turmas, and each time the class reacted differently. Some turmas were loud and obnoxious, but full of brilliant students who loved to volunteer to solve problems on the board. Others more quiet and reserved, and my questions were often met by an awkward silence. The only thing they all had in common was that they giggled at my horrible pronunciation of math terms in Portuguese. If you ever took a math class in college and had an Asian TA with an impossible accent who tried to explain math to you, you know exactly how this group of 8th graders felt. (If you thought parallel was a hard word to say in English, imagine saying "paralelas" over and over infront of a room full of 8th graders). I have found that I can hold basic conversations in Portuguese, but I need a lot of practice with math terms.

I also had the opportunity to take over a few English classes, which were a lot of fun for both me and the kids. Most of them do not have the opportunity to practice speaking English, and have never heard a native English speaker speak English before. In each class I introduced myself in English, and told them I came from the United States of America. The confused looks that followed usually prompted me to say "My parents were born in China, but I was born and raised in America, therefore I am American". It's a difficult concept to explain to a group of high schoolers, even if our language barrier did not exist. America is full of people who may look different, with ancestors that come from different places, practice all sorts of different religions, but still call themselves Americans. Here in my community, everyone looks the same, speak the same languages, and families stay in the same area for generations. I anticipated more questions about what makes an "American an American", but kids are kids, and accepted what I said in order to move onto the questions that were of more interest to them. Here is what they usually ask:
"Teacher, how old are you?" 26.
"Teacher, how many kids do you have?" None.
"Teacher, you are married?" No.
"You have a boyfriend?" No.
"Are you looking for a boyfriend?".... This question is usually asked by a smartass male student with a devious grin, and prompts so much hollaring and laughter from the whole class that supervising teacher has to step in to help me bring them back to attention.

Regardless, the students are interested in learning more about me, and I am looking forward to learning more about them too. When I do, I'll be sure to share it here. But that's all for now.
Thanks for reading.

JUST A FEW TRAINING UPDATES

My weeks as a trainee have flown by.  

I am now entering week 6.  I have a lot to share, but for starters, here are a few of my favorite parts of Peace Corps Training thus far:

Pounding peanuts into peanut dust

FOOD DAY

A few weeks ago, we had a cross-cultural cooking day with our host families.  For this day, each language groups and respective host families were instructed to create traditional dishes from our countries, and teach each other how to make them.  In my group, our Maes (mothers), taught us how to make to a traditional Mozambican dish – couve.  Couve, a green leafy plant from which the dish gets its name – is one of my favorite dishes to eat, but it is one of the most difficult dishes to make.  In addition to the plant itself, the primary ingredients to the dish are peanut dust and coconut milk. 

Making coconut milk by hand

To prepare this dish, first we chopped the couve leaves into small bits.  Then, we learned how to pound the peanuts into dust using a pilao. (Peanuts were pounded, inspected and sifted for larger pieces, and pounded again). This process was repeated until the Maes decided the dust was acceptable. Lastly, coconut milk was made using a something that resembled a small stool with a sharp razor attached to it (I asked time and time again what this was called, but just cannot seem to remember).  The insides of coconuts were shaved out, then the shavings are doused in hot water, wrung out for ‘milk’, then doused again and again until the liquid squeezed out was essentially only water.  

Galinha (Live Chicken)

Still alive galinha about to become
frango (dead chicken for eating)

The ingredients are then combined in a large pot and boiled until it is deemed “done” by one of our Maes. These incredible women, who have been cooking nearly their whole lives, can tell whether or not food is ready by just simply glancing at it. On our cooking day, our Maes also taught us how to make other traditional dishes such as xima (a white cornmeal porridge/loaf type substance), vegetable salads, chicken, and rice with vegetables. 

Plucking the feathers from our frango.

For our American dish for cross-cultural cooking day, decided to make fried chicken sandwiches and mashed potatoes.  In the United States these foods are extremely common and are readily available from your local fast food restaurant.  However here in Mozambique, eating these foods means buying all the ingredients and making everything from scratch. Potatoes, butter, milk… Bread, tomatoes, lettuce, mayo, and a LIVE chicken. It’s some sort of long-standing Peace Corps tradition that trainees learn to kill a chicken during their training.  We had 2 live chickens to kill on cross-cultural cooking day (one for the Maes’ dish and one for our chicken sandwiches).  I got to kill one of them.

Taking the life out of that chicken was awful, I felt disgusted and nauseous afterward (especially during the de-feathering and de-gutting process).  But our fried chicken sandwiches tasted that much better because I knew how hard we worked prepare that food for our table.  Here in our village, most families prefer to prepare their own food, so they know that the food is safely and well prepared. However this means seeing animals killed while walking along the side of the road is quite normal. The upside to the animal killings, the meat is always fresh. In addition to fresh meats, the markets here are filled with fresh fruits and vegetables from local machambas (gardens), and the bakery is filled with freshly baked bread (we buy fresh bread every evening to have it for breakfast). Fresh foods that are local to Mozambique are cheap and easy to find.  Since we are so close to the borders of Swaziland and South Africa, the things that are not produced are imported from these countries.  A local gas station store that sells imported ice cream bars has become a common ‘place to go’ for PCTs after a long day of classes.

IFP DAYS

Every week, we spend at least one day of ‘classtime’ at the local IFP (Teacher Training Institute), attending training sessions in addition to our language and technical classes.  These sessions cover Safety, Security, Medical, and others necessary topics, and are lead by Peace Corps Staff members or current Peace Corps Volunteers.  Although this is always a long information-packed day, these sessions have also become a place for us to talk about many topics that are often too avoided in such as differences among race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation/identity, and other physical or emotional differences among people in the United States. Some sessions are presented in a fun manner, some more serious, and many involve a bit of role-play/ skit acting (we all will have professional acting degrees by the end of training).  Through these exercises we not only learn more about the Peace Corps, but more about each other as well.  My fellow trainees are all such incredible people.  Everyone comes from different backgrounds, and everyone's experiences back home in the U.S. and here in Mozambique have been different.

As Peace Corps Trainees, we are here as cultural ambassadors to share with Mozambicans the diversity of our country.  At the end IFP days, we have Ngoma Time – a time designated specifically for cultural exchange performances of Mozambican and American.  Local performance groups have been invited to perform for us, and we in turn put together presentations to reflect upon the different aspects of American life.  Our groups have been quite creative – some fun performances have included singing and dancing to well known American songs, reenactments of classic American stories, explanations of American holidays, and even an impressively choreographed step routine. 

Local Mozambican dance group

MOZAMBICAN HOLIDAY CELEBRATIONS.

During our few weeks here, we have been fortunate enough to witness the celebrations of 3 different national Mozambican holidays. On each holiday, schools and most public businesses/offices are closed, and celebrations take place throughout the country.  In our village, we attended ceremonies in the town’s plaza, where officials spoke, priests lead prayers, local dancers and singers perform, and actors often reenacted significant historical events for which the holidays celebrate.  

Here is a brief overview of the holidays that we have celebrated thus far:

September 7 – Dia da Vitoria (Victory Day)– On September 7, 1974, Mozambique signed an agreement with Portugal to end the Mozambican War of Independence.  The war had lasted from 1964-74, although Mozambique did not officially gain independence from Portugal until June 5, 1975, (June 5^th is celebrated as Dia da Independencia (Independence Day)).

September 25 – Dia das Forcas Armadas (Armed Forces Day, or Revolution Day) – On September 25, 1964, Mozambique political party FRELIMO officially launched their first offenses against the Portuguese authorities, and began the Mozambican War of Independence.

October 4 – Dia da Paz (Day of Peace and Reconciliation) – On October 4, 1992, the Mozambican Civil War officially ended with the signing of the Rome General Peace Accords.  The civil war between revolutionary and governing party FRELIMO (Mozambique Liberation Front) and rebellion party RENAMO (Mozambican National Resistance) had lasted over 15 years.

...AND MORE

There is still so much of Mozambican history that I do not know.  As my Portuguese improves, I am looking forward to reading and learning more about Mozambican history from the locals here.  According to my first Language Placement Interview (LPI) I am now speaking at an Intermediate-High level – a significant improvement from the Beginner level which I started at just weeks ago.  For now I am enjoying training and taking advantage of the wonderful scenery.  This past weekend, the Peace Corps staff put together a hike/picnic for us trainees to visit the Tres Fronterrias (Three borders – Mozambique, Swaziland, and South Africa).  Here we all are at the top!

Sadly, in less than a week we will all be separating.  At the end of this week we will be concluding Phase 1 of our Education training program. In a few days we will find out where our future sites (our homes for the next 2 years) will be. We will be spending Phase 2 (3 weeks) at our future sites, living with local host families and learning ore about the city/villages customs and language(s) before returning to our training village for our final Phase 3.  

This is all of I have to share for now...

Ate logo

MY PCT STORY BEGINS

It’s been over 2 weeks since my initial post, and so much has happened!! This post is a bit long, but bear with me - I have a lot to share.

To start, I want to share with you all a video of a TED talk with Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi: “The danger of a single story”.  We were shown this video during our 2 day staging event in Philadelphia, and for many reasons, her words have really stuck with me.  If you have the time, please watch this video before you continue to read.

http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story?language=en

If you do not want to watch the video right now (I know my audience…many of you probably will not), let me share a quote which gives a brief description of what she speaks about: “The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.”  Like many Americans, I grew up a single story view of what Africa was like: a place of famine, a place of disease, a place of ‘development’ and misfortune.  After only 2 weeks here I am ashamed to admit that I bought into, and also told this type of single story of Africa.  But now that I am here, I hope to use this blog to tell more than the typical American single story of Africa - this is MY story. 

About 2 weeks ago, when I got off the plane in Maputo (the capitol city of Mozambique) with 64 other Peace Corps Trainees (PCTs), we were greeted warmly by the PC Mozambique Country Director and current Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs). We were taken to a beautiful hotel - with an outdoor pool, endless buffet meals, happy hour drink specials, and this spectacular view of the city of Maputo and the Indian Ocean.

We spent 2 days at the hotel going over security measures and medical need-to-knows, then departed in small buses (chapas) to a village about 80 km outside Maputo to begin our official 3 month training. Upon arrival, we found our host “moms” and families lined up to greet us, pieces of paper bearing our names. When I found my name and my “mom”, she pulled me into a big hug and lead me away my by the hand.  I tried to tell her I that I did not speak much Portuguese, but she did not seemed worried at all - just smiled and lead me to her car and motioned for me to get in. She brought me back to her house and helped me settle in.  Here is a photo of my room on the day I first moved in

I learned that my host mom, or “ Minha Mae”, is a recently retired Portuguese language teacher, and I am the 5^th Peace Corps Volunteer that she has hosted in her home.  She does not speak English, and because I did not speak Portuguese, communication first few days consisted mostly of gesturing, pointing, and nodding/shaking heads.  My host brother, age 13, allowed me to follow him around the house the first few days pointing and gesturing as he said the Portuguese words/phrases for everything.  I thought that this would be my form of communication for the next 3 months, but now after only 2 weeks, I can hold real lengthy conversations with both of them!  The conversations are probably still grammatically incorrect on my end… but at least now they can understand everything I say, and I can understand them (they do speak extra slow when speaking to me, to make it easier to understand).

Much of my language improvement has been due to my daily training sessions or ‘school’ as my Mae calls it, which takes place Monday-Fridays, 7:30am - 4:30pm.  The first week, training consisted of mostly hours of intense Portuguese language classes in small groups, which we were placed into following an initial language placement interview. Needless to say, I was placed into a ‘beginner’ class – we started with the Portuguese alphabet on our first day of class – but we have all progressed rather quickly!  This week, we have also began ‘teacher training’ classes, to prepare us for our next 2 years teaching in Mozambican high schools.  All of our instructors are native Mozambicans, and usually speak only Portuguese with us. (Luckily for my group, our language instructor also an English teacher at a secondary school level… so sometimes he will use English to explain things to us when we are REALLY struggling). It has been extremely helpful to have instructors who not only teach us Portuguese, but can also shed insight on the education system, and lifestyles/culture here in Mozambique.  Our LCF (Language and Culture Facilitator) has given us advice on everything from how to greet someone in Portuguese to how to catch a chapa ride to Maputo. Here is a picture of my class, out for lunch earlier this week with our instructor at the semi-weekly local market.

At this market (and all around town) we were encouraged to practice our Portuguese with the locals around town.  This may seem like an awkward or painful task to complete, but here in our Mozambican village everyone is incredibly nice and friendly!  When people pass each other on the street, it is customary to greet each other with “Bom dia/Boa tarde/Boa noite” (Good morning/afternoon/evening) – depending on time of day.  In addition, most will also ask “How are you?” - even if they are complete strangers! Since obvious foreigners to the village, people have often taken extra interest in us PSTs and made an extra effort to simply say hello and ask about our day (at first I did not know how to respond, so I would just smile and nod…but now I can greet and respone to people properly too!).  The children here are the cutest – most will yell out “Bom dia!” or more commonly a more informal “Ola!” when I pass them on the street or pass by as they are playing in their yards.  Earlier this week, I young girl (who I had met a few time before) followed me home.   She asked me to play with her in the yard – we played hopping games with an old tire, threw around a ball, and did cartwheels in the grass.  Kids walking by would stop and watch, and want to join in.  Soon we had nearly 20 kids playing with us!  I would not consider myself to be someone who is "good with kids", but these kids were adorably full of energy and easy to get along with! Eventually when it got dark I had to send everyone home because it was time for my evening bath and dinner.

Speaking of bathing, I know many of my family members/former roommates were concerned that I would not be able to shower as much here as I did in the U.S… not to worry – I actually do the opposite.  I bathe more here!  Cleanliness and appearance is very important here in Mozambique.  Most people here take 2 bucket baths a day, and dress in fashionable, well-pressed clothing.  I have been trying to integrate into this community, so of course I take 2 baths a day. For my bucket baths, I boil a kettle of water, pour it into a large water bucket/basin and add cold water until it reaches an acceptable bathing temperature.  At my house, my “casa de banho” (bathroom or bath house) is indoors, so I take my bucket to the tub area and use a smaller bucket to pour water over myself as I bathe.  At some other houses, the casa de banho is an extra house that is outside of the main house. At my house, it is routine to take one bath in the morning when we wake up, and one in the evening just before dinner so we can clean away the day’s dirt and be clean when we sit down for dinner.

At dinner, THERE IS ALWAYS SO MUCH FOOD.  Actually, at all meals, there is a lot of food.  At mealtimes I am offered a ton of food, and given strange looks when I do not pile my plate up or go back for second and third helpings.  Although we do not have the endless varieties available in the United States, there is still a lot of delicious food!  Breakfast at my house usually consists of coffee and bread with peanut butter or eggs.   I am given a snack of crackers and a juice box to take with me to class (this seems to be standard for all Peace Corps Trainees here… most of us are given this type of morning snack).  For lunch most weekdays, I walk home to eat lunch – usually pasta or rice, with some form of salad (cabbage, tomatoes, cucumbers, green beans, onions, carrots, or other local vegetables), and fruit for dessert.  If I return home right after school, we will sit down for afternoon tea with some form of snack, only to eat dinner only a few hours later.  Dinner usually includes rice or xima (type of cornmeal dish), some form of meat (usually chicken or fish at my house), some kind of vegetable, and fruit for dessert.  The fruit here is incredibly fresh and delicious. We have a papaya tree in our backyard, and fresh papaya has become my new favorite food.

Last Saturday, we celebrated my Mae’s birthday.  Since her actual birthday fell on a weekday, all of her kids, several family and friends came in for the weekend to help her celebrate.  Her daughters and sister arrived early the morning began cooking right away.  I tried to help as much as I could, but really they did all of the work.  We cooked up a feast, put on matching capulanas (more on capulanas on a later date), and entered the house to begin the ceremony for my Mae.  There was singing (I couldn’t understand the song, but it was incredibly upbeat and festive), and dancing as they wrapped a matching capulana around my Mae and other elderly women who were in the house.  When the singing ended, everyone stood in a circle as all of her children, senior family members and friends made short speeches to pay tribute to my Mae.  I didn’t need to understand their words to know that each of their speeches spoke words of gratitude and well wishes to the incredibly special birthday lady!

Everyday I learn something new from my Mae.  Sometimes it's life skills (like how to hand wash clothes - that is not fun), and other days I learn more about the history of Mozambique.  As my Portuguese improves, I'm sure there is much more I can talk about - and I will try my best to keep you all updated more frequently. I have just secured decent internet service for my phone an laptop - so please feel free to contact me if you wish to hear more!

Hello Everyone!

Welcome to my blog!  In just a few hours, I will be boarding a plane to travel to Mozambique, where I will be living for the next 27 months! Perfect time to write my first blog post. I am brand new to blogging, so please bear with me. As time goes on hopefully I will get better at this.

I have officially begun my journey to becoming a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV). For now, I am still considered a Peace Corps Trainee (PCT). For the past 2 days, I have completed first part of my training: attending the staging event.  During staging, the other PCTs and I participated in a variety of informational sessions in order to better prepare ourselves travel to a new country.

Our group, Moz27, will be the 27th group of Peace Corps Volunteers to serve in Mozambique. There are over 60 people in our group.  I have met (almost) everyone over the last 2 days, however it will probably still be a while before I actually remember everyone's names...but everyone is extremely helpful and friendly! I am looking forward to spending the next 3 months training with these folks.

Tonight I spend my last night in the U.S.A. packing and rearranging my luggage for the trip over. Hopefully all of my luggage makes it over with me.  I am not sure when (or how often) I will be able to update this blog, but stay tuned!