My Home in Namaacha

It has been a crazy first week in Africa and I will do my best to summarize the past week’s events…

My Home in Namaacha

Where do I begin…I guess I should start by describing my living situation.

I am living with a family here in the city of Namaacha (pronounced NaMAsha), about an hour and a half bus ride from Maputo, the capital of Mozambique.  All the volunteers are dispersed around the town living with different homestay families.  The city has beautiful views of the mountains around the area.  , It is about a 45 minute walk from one end of the city to the other.  The town itself is bigger than I was picturing, houses are not right on top of each other and are more spaced out so that they have their own yard most times.  Roads are dirt, except for one paved road, which makes for a lot of mud in the raining season which is about to begin. 

In my house lives my mae (mom) Palmira, avo (grandma), irma (sister) Senina (19 years old), and irmao (brother) Whyte (16 years old).  I have also met several cousins who sometimes stop by for lunch or dinner.  Peace Corps does an intensive training with the families prior to our arrival, covering the importance of proper food and water preparation and overall methods for making sure we stay healthy and safe during these 10 weeks of homestay life.  The families have basically been told that we don’t know how to do anything, let alone speak Portuguese, so they are extremely patient with me as I try to communicate in my broken knowledge of the language and go throughout the house asking how to say things or practicing formulating an intelligible sentence in Portuguese.  Our homestay families are a great resource for learning everything from how to clean the house, to cooking, to killing that chicken (haven’t done it yet, but I told them I would watch them do it one time.  Though I did discover that my mae is afraid of killing the chicken and has my sister or brother do it, or one can buy chicken in the market.)

In the house, there are two bedrooms, a kitchen, and a living room.  Following Peace Corps policy, I have my own room with a lock on the door and bars on the window.  I was provided with a plastic box where I have all my clothes stored, a wire to hang clothes on and hangers, a table, bed, and a chair.  Quaint yet comfortable.  I wouldn’t recommend the bed to anyone with a back problem, but it works.  My only complaint, the pillow….probably the hardest pillow I have ever seen.  The house, like most houses in the area, has electricity, but there are sometimes random power outages that can last for a few minutes to a few hours.

So, on to the kitchen.  My house has an electric stove and an oven (I came home to cookies and cake the other day).  They also have a freezer/refrigerator which basically resembles one of those rectangular ice cream freezers.  Meals in my house typically consist of a meat, starch, and vegetable.  They definitely use a lot of oil in their cooking and have a heavily starch dominated diet, but my family definitely seems to cook somewhat more healthy than other families.  For breakfast I usually have bread with peanut butter, or a fried egg, and polonhy (which I think is a kind of bologna type thing).  Then they have an AM snack of either fruit or saltine-like crackers.  Lunch and dinner are pretty much interchangeable meals regarding what we eat, but  I’ve had fish, chicken, beans, and sausage, pasta (spaghetti noodles),  and we always have either rice or potatoes.   The meal finishes with fruit, such as orange, papaya, bananas, pears, apple, etc.  I have quickly learned ways to say I am full, as they always offer seconds and seem confused when I decline until I explained, “Tenho uma estomaginha.” (I have a little stomach), to which I received chuckles but I see it was on our cheat-sheet intro to Portuguese paper for a reason!  They definitely eat huge platefuls of food!  Mom, make room in my bridesmaid dress in case you have to take it out a little! I can only say no politely so many times to seconds, and I have heard girls typically gain weight during training! Quite the starch filled diet!  Though, compared to other families, my family seems to cook fairly healthy.  I am hoping to engage in a nice cultural exchange soon and offer to cook dinner for them. 

On to the fun stuff: the bathroom.  My bathroom is located outside the house a short walk, about 10-20 steps or so.  (Some houses have the bathroom inside.)  SO there are two types of toilets: latrines and “flushing”, I have the later.  A latrine is just a key shaped hole in the ground, I haven’t actually seen one yet, but I can imagine, and you just squat over it and do your thing.  For flushing toilets, you do your business and then pour in a bucket of water and it goes down.  (They do have toilet paper.)  So woo, having a toilet seat to sit on! 

So showers…. They aren’t as bad as it sounds, I promise.  I take water from this huge trashcan like holder where it is stored in the house and mix it with some boiled water to create nice warm bath water in a large basin which I proceed to carry out to the bathroom.  Then you take a cup and use that to pour the water over yourself.  It sounds terrible, but it’s really not all that bad, surprisingly.  I can imagine it feeling really good when it gets super hot outside soon, but it has been pretty cold lately in the morning which wakes you up pretty quickly.

Weather: the weather here is pretty random.  One day it was freezing and rained a little then the next the sun was out and it was a nice 80ish degrees.  The rainy season is coming though and I anticipate it to be very muddy, and loud on these tin roofs which certainly make the smallest sprinkle sound like a torrential downpour. 

SO those are the typical day to day things in probably way too much detail.  It is amazing how different each volunteer’s house and family are.  Some have bigger houses, some smaller, outside latrines, and inside toilets, houses with several younger kids and little privacy, or houses with demanding maes who make them bathe three times a day, etc.  Overall, I have had no problems with my family.  They are extremely respectful of my house, give me privacy but are eager to help me learn when I ask.  At first, I wished I had a family with more younger kids in it because they somewhat cling on to you and love teaching you vocab, etc., but I have definitely come to enjoy having my own space and having a family where I am not afraid to join in but don’t feel pressured to always do so.  And then I can just visit other friends’ houses and play with their kids when I want.

I will try to upload photos soon!

First Impressions

We have officially arrived in Mozambique!  For two nights we will be here in Maputo, then we head off to Namaacha on Saturday to meet our host families there.

I sit now on the balcony of my hotel room overlooking the Maputo Bay.  The sun is beginning to set, its rays filtering through the clouds, it is slightly muggy but not horribly so, breezy, and maybe around 70-75 degreesish.  Life could certainly be worse.  

view from my balcony

Today, after our 15 hour then 1.5 hour flights, we took 3 buses to the hotel, our luggage all in the back of a pickup and filling a trailer.

People strolled the streets, some waving at us, other passing drivers peering into our bus I’m sure wondering what we were all doing there.  Maybe I was expecting a bigger city since it’s the capital or maybe we just didn’t venture in that area on our short drive from the airport to the hotel, but it kinda reminds me of downtown LA.  One side of the street has older looking cement walls and low buildings while the other side has a bright, newly painted yellow apartment building.  The bus driver pointed out Nelson Mandela's house as we drove past.  Billboards for Coca Cola and even KFC are displayed along the road, the occasional fruit stand or guy selling maps appears, satellite dishes sit in apartment windows, clothes hang from banisters, kids in uniform leave school, 6 people ride in the bed of passing pick up trucks...It's not crazy crowded or hectic feeling at all and those on the bus sit there trying to take it all in, that we are actually here!

Unfortunately, we don’t get the chance to explore the city as they confine us to the hotel premises for these next two days, giving us more vaccines (I only got a rabies shot and then get another tomorrow) and supplying our malaria medication (cross your fingers for no crazy side effects), and then tomorrow we go over some safety things and prep for living with our host families who we meet on Saturday! 

It’s all happening very quickly, yet still feels very surreal in a way probably because we are still just at a hotel and there still remain a lot of unknowns.  I’m nervous about meeting my host family and then actually jumping right in to training and this is all really happening! 

P.S. I am unsure how reliable the communication, particularly the internet, will be during these first 10 weeks of training, so, just in case, there may be fewer posts, if any, but I’ll try my best to continue to share my experiences as soon as I can!

From the airplane

Distance traveled:4355 miles

Distance to destination: 3682 miles

Time to go:6:55

Right now my watch says 7:07pm, though I have no idea what time it is wherever we are flying over right now.  If this post is rambly, I apologize seeing as how I am greatly sleep deprived and fighting a cold that decided to start yesterday unfortunately.  Despite that though, the flight is fairly comfortable.  Whoever invented those horseshoe-shaped U pillows is a genius! And they have the individual tv screens on the seats with lots of movies, games and tv shows to choose from.  Though, I have opted to spend the past 8 or so hours sleeping on and off because of our early morning/not sleeping last night.  But I am getting ahead of myself, let’s recap the past day or two.

So Monday was my flight to Philadelphia for what they call Staging, essentially an orientation-like welcome to Peace Corps type of event.  I arrived in Philadelphia in the evening on Monday and met with a girl at the airport to share a shuttle to the hotel, of course we were on complete opposite sides of the airport and hauling our luggage all over was a blast!  Relaxed evening spent meeting other early arrivers and discussing our very similar concerns over attempting to pack according to the 80 lb weight limit and things we had to leave at home, and how none of us really know Portuguese and how in the world are we going to learn it in only 10 weeks! 

Tuesday morning, a few of us took the short walk to go see the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall.  The weather was muggy, hot and sticky, my dad rubbing this in more with a text message declaring it was sunny blue skies back in Orange.  Finally, at noon, my first actual Peace Corps activities began.  After turning in some paperwork and registration forms, the staging included seeing and meeting everyone in our training class for the first time, discussing Peace Corps expectations, their core values and mission statement, our anxieties and aspirations, brief touch upon safety and potential threats we may encounter, and logistical information for our flight the next day. 

Brief description of our training class: there are 51 of us, everyone teaching or a teacher trainer.  Most people are around my age, 21-25ish with a few in their early 30s, two married couples, slightly more females than males, everyone from all over the country from the Bay Area, to Washington, to South Dakota and Nebraska, to  NYC and Pennsylvania.  Made me realize I need to work on my US geography!

Anyway, last meal a few of us went to Hard Rock Café, good food but terrible terribly slow service.  Then, since we were expected to check out of our hotel at 2:30 am, about 20 of us all met up and decided it was pointless to try to get any sleep, perhaps this is why I am now sick, but it was great getting to know people J.

Our bus left the hotel around 3:00am for the drive to JFK airport through the pouring rain.  We arrived at the airport at 5:40 to realize that the check-in desk does not open until 7:30am, so all 51 of us plopped down in the middle of the airport with our huge suitcases, quite the sight!

Anyway, we eventually got on the airplane, no one left behind, no one (surprisingly) having any difficulty with the weight/size requirement making me think of all those things I chose to leave behind and probably could have gotten away with bringing. 

And now I sit on the airplane scrolling through which movie to watch as we fly along the coast of Africa, still something surreal about the whole situation.  In about 6 and a half hours now, we arrive in South Africa with a short layover before our flight to Maputo where we will be greeted by the Mozambique Peace Corps country director and staff.

Sorry for the boring post, but some of you like to hear about the logistical information.  More exciting posts to come, I promise, including first impressions of Africa!

Bounce House, Swimming, Pinata, Oh My!

So since I was put on the spot yesterday and didn't really say much, I will begin my first post with a huge THANK YOU!  

Thank you to everyone who made it out yesterday to my going away party.  If I do say so myself, it was quite the party! At one point, one of my friends asked me, "Who are all of these people?!" and it was amazing to look around and see people from all different parts of my life: family, friends I have known since elementary school, college friends making the long drive down for the day, friends of the family who have watched me grow up, friends who I consider my second family or have become part of the family...all there to support me (I guess people like me haha) and I couldn't help but feel more loved and lucky to have such support and encouragement behind me.

The past few months I have been living in a state of no absolutes.  I was always just taking one step at a time whether it was hitting the submit button on my application back in February, preparing for my interview in March, or sending that email that said "I, Sara Nowakowski, accept my position to serve in the Peace Corps."

Now, I continue that trend of taking it one step at a time.  To be honest, I still don't really feel like I am going anywhere yet as I begin packing (well soon will begin packing, in honesty I will probably procrastinate on that for a while despite my mom's constant reminding of it), then I will just be taking a plane to visit Philadelphia, then that final plane to Africa.

The most common questions I receive are: "Aren't you scared?" and "Are you ready?"

To the first question my typical response is "I am every emotion."  Scared for the unknown, yet excited for it. Nervous about what I am going to encounter, yet anxious to begin a new adventure.  Terrified of a complete and abrupt change of every part of my daily routine and a huge distance between my usual support system, yet thrilled for the challenge to go beyond my usual comfort zone to test myself and just see what happens, to just LIVE and experience an adventure that is for sure going to include its hard, harder, and hardest times,   but also its best, better, and bestest times, all memories I will never forget!

Which leads in to the question "Are you ready?"  Typically, my response here is, "I don't think I will ever be totally ready."  How can one be totally ready for something for which she has no idea what to expect?  From past volunteers, that is the most common advice I have received is: try to go in to your service with no expectations because it is not going to be anything like you expect.  So this is something I have been trying to hold to, to have no expectations and, frankly, I don't know where I would even begin such expecting.  And that is a big part of why I want to do this, to enter the unknown, something I know very little about, to LEARN about a new culture, lifestyle, community, country, language, and myself.

Everyone says "Now is the perfect time in your life to travel and do something like this."  And I agree: Now is A Time for Adventure...