Homestay Week 2: The Garlic Fry Revolution

I woke up bright and early on Sunday, hoping to be the early bird to get the Internet worm. While my family ran off to church, I told them that I was going to try to get online. I walked down to the internet café, but it was closed. I walked down to the secondary school that sometimes has internet, but it too was closed. Not a lot I could do about that. I returned to the house and went back to sleep for a little bit.

As this week began, I vowed that I was going to be more helpful around the house. I told minha mae that I wanted to help out a little bit every night with cooking or cleaning or something. It’s very strange to be catered to when you have lived fairly independently for the last couple years. I just feel horrible watching the bulk of the work drop onto the shoulders of a couple of teenage girls.

I received my first cooking lesson, but it was more than just cooking. First we had to light the carvao – the charcoal. That was a lesson in itself. Once the carvao was hot enough, we starting cooking batatas fritas – French fries – which apparently are a pretty popular food item around here. I told minha mae that the only thing that can make French fries better than they already are is garlic. She raised her eyebrows a little bit, but didn’t doubt me, so we added garlic. It tasted like home, and minha mae enjoyed. I told some of the other Trainees about this, and they thought it was a good idea. I’m hoping this will spread around Mozambique.

I ran over to a friend’s casa in the afternoon, hoping to learn how to make a grass mat. But the person who was going to teach us didn’t have the material. We stuck around for a while and chatted. And of course, we were given food. After chilling for about an hour, I returned to minha casa with two other Trainees to give one a haircut. They were blown away by the house. One of them said “Are we still in Namaacha?” Apparently, we looked hungry, so minha mae put food on the table for us.

Some family members of minha mae had come over and all of them spoke English. What a sigh of relief. I finally got some things straightened out. As a suspected, my “sisters” are not minha mae’s daughters. They are girls that she has taken in so they can attend school. I also got a full tour of the massive property I’m living on, as well as a good chunk of history of how this place came to be.

After some time to rest and relax and read, it was time to prepare dinner. I helped prepare some rice with tomato, garlic and onion. It turned out pretty well. More important than dinner, I finally cracked into my sisters. I broke out the Sudoku book and taught them how to do Sudoku. It was a good experience because it got them talking and thinking, and I also picked up a couple more vocabulary words: coluna (column), fileira (row) and caixa (box), all important words for Sudoku. I have a feeling we’ll be doing more Sudoku in the days and weeks to come.

I knew Monday was going to be a hot day when I didn’t need to wear sweats to bed the night before, and was I right. I think Monday was the hottest day we’ve had so far. I started with my new language group and had no problem getting into it. After language, we got a lesson on the structure of secondary schools. It was very important information for all of us, as we’ll be directly dealing with the school hierarchy.

We also got a new Volunteer to help us out this week and he seems pretty cool. He teaches English at a Catholic school and seems to be enjoying his time here. It’s great that Peace Corps brings in current Volunteer because it gives us Trainees and opportunity to pick their brains and get some stories instead of just theories and concepts.

During the afternoon, we went to the market to do our language application. We had to get the prices of some food items, so when we go to the market next time, we know how much to pay. I found a pair of jeans that I wanted to buy, but the salesperson wanted an obnoxious amount of money for them. I tried to bargain them down, but she wouldn’t lower her price much. Not a great loss – there’s supposed to be a good clothes market on Wednesday, so I’m going to try to get a pair of jeans and some new shoes.

I returned home to have tea with minha mae and start cooking a bit. We started “cabbage with diced meat.” As with everything, cooking is a great opportunity to learn vocabulary. The food turned out pretty good (I think). As the food cooked, I tried to teach my sisters how to shuffle cards. They were blown away by what I was doing, and they somewhat struggled with it. We’ll continue to practice, if for no other reason that I really have the itch to teach something to someone.

After dinner, I helped out a bit with the dishes. The girls thought this was particularly funny, but then again, they think everything I do is funny. I still can’t get them to talk a whole lot, but that’s not going to keep me from talking to them. I need all the practice I can get, even if I don’t get anything more than a smile as a reply.

I woke up half way through the night from a Larium-induced dream. I’ve decided that I’m going to stop worrying what time it is when I wake up or when the roosters crow. I’ll just get up for good when my alarm goes off. Like Sunday night, it was really hot on Monday night. But we woke up on Tuesday to clouds, which kept the temperature cool for a little bit of the morning.

Our language class started a couple minutes late, and it was a pretty slow morning all the way around. I think all of us were in a bit of a rut today. But we managed through it and finished early, so a couple of us darted over to the internet café for some much needed news on sports and politics, emails, and more. As the morning progressed, the line to get on the computer (there are two of them in the café) got longer. I was pretty happy to get in my time early.

I had a picnic lunch under a tree – when its 95 degrees outside, you take any shade you can get – with a couple of other trainees. I’m getting a lot of different lunches, which is good for my sanity. I think some of the volunteers are getting tired of getting the same foods everyday. After lunch, we headed over to our afternoon lecture – on myths and misconceptions of HIV/AIDS. Even though we are the education bloc of volunteers, there is still a huge focus on HIV/AIDS, because as teachers, it will be our responsibility to include this knowledge into our curricula.

I returned home for my standard tea and bread with minha mae, and then my domestic education continued. I learned how to “pilar” – use a giant mortar and pestle to crush peanuts, and how to shave a coconut.

Dinner was fantastic, not only because of the food, but because it was bookended by a pair of phone calls – one from my parents and one from my brother. It was great to hear their voices and catch up a bit. I won’t lie: it has been somewhat difficult to be cut off from the Western world and all the great things that come with it: family and friends, crazy elections, football season, and another year of heightened expectations for my beloved hockey team. Although I won’t be able to get my day to day doses, the news that I get every once in a while will be just all the sweeter.

On Wednesday, dll of the Trainees in the group met at the same location for what will be the only time this week. The consensus thinking is that the days where we are all together tend to move faster than the other days, if for no other reason than it is a change from the norm. I think most of us also agree that this week is moving much faster than last week. It is probably just a sign that we are starting to fall into a better rhythm here in Namaacha. Language class was okay – a lesson on colors on clothing, material covered fairly early in Rosetta Stone. After language class, we had a lecture on factors that fuel the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The lecture began with a small activity to show how easily HIV/AIDS can spread in a group when 18% of the people – the percentage of people with HIV/AIDS in Mozambique – are HIV positive.

Over an extended lunch hour, I got my first real dose of a street market here in Mozambique. It was very similar, albeit significantly smaller, than what was in Ghana – cooked food and fresh vegetables, cloth shops, and used clothing and shoes. I was hoping to buy a pair of jeans, but the vendor wouldn’t bargain. Without the proper language skills, this is a tough task.

In the afternoon, we had two lectures: one on dealing with unwanted attention, which we get a lot of – for example, early in the week, a boy approached me and pet my arm totally out of the blue – and one safety and security. We were scheduled for a third on homesickness, but time didn’t permit.

After a quick soda in celebration of a Trainee’s birthday, I headed home for tea with minha mae. I had a confidence-building conversation with her. It was probably the easiest time I’ve had talking with anyone in Portuguese over the last couple of weeks. The timing of it could not have been better, because early in the morning, I was frustrated by my low comprehension level. I realized that I wasn’t able to translate every word that was being said. But as this conversation went on, I realized I didn’t have to translate every word because I pretty much just understood it without having to think about the words. That’s where I need to be – where I don’t have to think about what’s being said.

I did my homework, helped cook dinner, dined, and went to bed, feeling completely drained, both from the day’s activities and the mental strain of speaking, listening and thinking in Portuguese.


I didn’t sleep well Wednesday night, as my alarm on my watch decided to go off on the hour, ever hour. Today, all of the maes in the group are joining our language group to teach us how to cook. We learned how to make a couple of traditional Mozambican dishes – food we may not make by ourselves once we go to site, but still good to know how to make them. I also witnessed the first killing and gutting of a chicken. I would have preferred it to be the rooster that decides that sunrise happens at 4:30, but this chicken worked just fine. I didn’t take part in the killing – I just watched it – but it seemed like a pretty simple task. It’s just weird to put a face to the food that is about to be consumed. It was still pretty delicious though.

The afternoon session was filled with techniques on how to be effective within our new communities. Some of the tools are absolutely invaluable to figuring out what a community needs, when they specifically need it, and what we as Volunteers can do to help great a sustainable impact.

We have a test tomorrow, so most of my time home was devoted to learning new vocabulary and reviewing the verb tenses we have learned. I was not of much help in the kitchen and my brain just wasn’t functioning well. I screwed up three Su Dokus in a row after dinner; I knew then that I needed to sleep.

I certainly made up for the lack of sleep from the night before with an easy and full night of sleep. I woke up feeling refreshed and confident that I would do well on the test for today. That confidence was shattered when we received a test which not only had a minimal amount of actually studied content, but a ridiculous amount of verb tenses that we have yet to even touch. For when question, I couldn’t even begin to form an answer; I just wrote “Que?” – “What?”

It was cloudy and cool for a good part of the morning. Then when it was time to leave for our morning sessions, the clouds blew off and got close to 95 or 100 degrees. The walk to the house was not enjoyable, and thankfully, we ran into a Peace Corps car which took us the rest of the way.

Our sessions today were fairly productive. Our morning sessions were about communication and homesickness. Our afternoon session was on developing lesson plans for our classes. For me, I haven’t had problems with homesickness, and a lot of the lesson planning used for Peace Corps parallels what I had been doing over the last year. After our afternoon session, we had our second Ngoma Time. Of course, as soon as the events began, it started to rain – how convenient.

After an end-of-the-week cerveja, I returned home in the rain and darkness that was only occasionally illuminated by lightning. I had tea, took a shower, and then had dinner. I had another conversation with minha mae after dinner where I didn’t have to think about what was being said; it just came. I’ve found that when I can dictate the direction of the conversation, I can understand a lot more of what she says. And I have a feeling that as I become more comfortable with the language, these conversations will be the norm and not the exception.

I slept through the night and was grateful for the extra 30 or45 minutes of sleep I’m able to get on Saturdays. The difference between starting at 7:30 and starting at 8:00 is huge. That extra sleeping time makes my day better right from the beginning. Our language group had what I thought to be a pretty productive meeting. We really picked up the pace today and learned how to conjugate verbs in two new forms –imperfeito and imperatitivo. I feel like this is what I need. The more tenses I know, the more I can pick up in conversations.

In between class and lunch, one of the current Volunteers, two other Trainees and I went for a small hike around Namaacha. We went up this small hill where we could overlook the valley. It’s a pretty brown place right now with the lack of rain, but it was still beautiful to be able to see for miles in between the rows of hills. The Volunteer, who was minha mae’s “godson” came to my house for lunch so they could catch up. Our meal was really good – fried chicken, cooked spinach and tomatoes, garlic fries and salad.

Right after lunch, I started on my laundry with minha mae. I must have been doing something right because she only stopped me twice. I did the washing and she did the rinsing, and I was thankful for that because even with the help, it took about two hours to wash, rinse and hang. She thanked me, which was kind of weird, and I thanked her in return, which made a lot more sense.

I ran down to the barraca to catch up with some other trainees to learn a game played by Volunteers. My partner and I were defeated in the game, badly. Some people stuck around, but some others and I left to try to play some Ultimate Frisbee. The soccer field was occupied and the field in front of the church was being used, so we ended up playing 5 on 5 on a nicely paved basketball court. It was really nice to be active and doing something that didn’t involve sitting or eating.

I returned for a lukewarm shower – as I was muito transpirado, a cool shower really hit the spot – tea, and dinner.

This week went by really fast. It doesn’t even compare to last week, which felt like a month. I think a lot of it has to do with becoming more comfortable with the day to day challenges – the pace and rhythm of life in Namaacha, the rapidly closing language gap, and other more personal challenges like the occasional bouts of loneliness and homesickness. With each new week, I suspect we will face new and more and bigger challenges. But with what we have gained thus far, getting over those bigger hurdles will be a lot easier than getting over the smaller hurdles of these past two weeks. And because of that, the weeks to come will go by faster and faster.