Week 6: Site Visits

It’s early. I can’t even say it’s “bright and early” because at 2:30 in the morning, nothing is bright. Even the stars that should be shining are covered by clouds that are showering a cool and gentle rain as we walk to our buses. We departed from Namaacha, not exactly wide-eyed, at 4:00 AM, and made our way through the dark toward Maputo. We arrived at the junta – the place where the chapas convene in Maputo – around 5:30, hoping for a 6:00 departure. That, however, was not meant to be: the driver tried to rip off our Volunteer and our Volunteer was not having it. It’s not the 50 Meticais difference that is the problem; it is the principle of the matter. We finally started really moving around 6:45.

The drive to Maxixe (pronounced ma-SHEESH) is long, bumpy, and slow. And the rain that is moving through the South of the country is not moving us along any faster. I closed my eyes for a fair portion of the trip that lasted until beyond 1:30. A group of about 10 of us – Volunteers, a friend visiting one of the Volunteers, and Trainees stopped for lunch before splitting off to different cities.

We walked through Maxixe, buying fresh cashews outside of a gas station and stocking up on food at the market. From Maxixe, five of us took a short chapa ride to a small city called Inhamussua (In-ya-MOO-swa, I think) where we arrived at the house where another Trainee and I were to stay from the next couple days. We arrived around 4:00, with food waiting for us. The black-eyed peas that my Volunteer’s empregada (maid) made were delicious. With little to do for the remainder of the night, we relaxed, talked about Peace Corps life, and did some reading.

The house is awesome. It is a coniço (ka-NEE-soo) house: it is a house made of reeds, with a tin roof. It has fairly constant electricity and a water tap outside the house, which provides such clean water that it needs no filtering. The bathroom, also made of reeds, is set aside about 20 yards from the house. There is no real toilet, but there is a small chimney, which goes down some distance, with a seat on top of it. It’s not uncomfortable, but it certainly doesn’t smell refreshing. All said, this is the kind of house I expected when I joined the Peace Corps. It is not glamorous, although it is nicer than most of the similar houses in the area.

After a rough night of sleep, I woke up Sunday morning feeling sick. I don’t know if it was dinner or the long day’s travel the day before, but I knew that it was going to be a long day. With my stomach aching and a headache to match, I figured it would be best to relax and drink water, but with the multiple runs to the bathroom, relaxing was not easy. Thankfully, I brought Pepto-Bismol – the best drug ever – with me, which, along with a nap and some water, helped settle my stomach. We made our way down to a barraca, where we played a couple games of pool and enjoyed each other’s company.

Walking back toward the house, we stopped in a market where we picked up some ingredients for dinner and dessert. We all helped out in making some pasta, fresh tomato sauce, and garlic bread. For dessert, we made monkey bread – a cinnamon sugar cake – with a banana frosting. It was delicious, but I probably ate too much of it.

That was confirmed when I woke up Monday again feeling sick. Somewhat frustrated,
I started drinking a lot of water and felt better. After eating breakfast, which also helped, we took a walk around the school. The school is a large, beautiful school agrarian school, so there are all sorts of plant life around. The students grow fruits and vegetables and raise chickens and cattle with varying rates of success.

We returned to the house and learned a bit about the grading system that our Volunteer used. He built a large and complicated spreadsheet that does almost all of the work for him, but he rewards attendance: students on the edge of passing a class get the bump up if they come to class.

The afternoon was a lot of sitting and waiting to head to Tofo for a little bit of beachside rest and relaxation. We got going mid afternoon, taking an open-back chapa from Inhamussua to Maxixe. An open-back chapa is a truck, with a rebar-supported canopy over the back. Peace Corps has told us not to ride these, but this the only type of chapa that runs between these two cities. 3d tetris

From Maxixe, we walked a couple blocks to the pier, where we took a 25 minute boat-ride across the bay to Inhambane City. We walked through a bit of this beautiful and more Westernized city to get a chapa to Tofo. But, being somewhat late in the afternoon, chapas were no longer running to Tofo. Excellent. So, we took a crammed in chapa in the general direction of Tofo and got off three-quarters of the way down. By this time, it was already dark, and we were lucky to hitch a ride in the back of truck to Tofo for the last seven kilometers. Fairly exhausted, we checked in and headed to Dino’s, a restaurant that sits on the beach. We ordered pizza, which was a little overhyped, but still not bad. Returning to our dorm-style room after a late-night drink, we set up bednets and fell asleep.

All of us woke up early, but with a full night’s sleep before, and a full day at the beach ahead. We were all on the beach by 8:30. The beach at Tofo is spectacular: it stretches in a crescent for a couple miles with a crystal clear ocean accompanying it. The water of the Indian Ocean is warm and wavy. I was excited to be swimming in my third ocean and getting a tan. Over the course of the day, more and more trainees showed up at Tofo, and it became quite a little party. I learned how to play Euchre, which is a pretty cool card game, and did a little bit of reading in between trips into the ocean.

We returned again to Dino’s to dinner. Not wanting pizza for a second night in a row, I ordered a shwarma, one of my favorite foods from my trip to Egypt. While it didn’t even come close to being as good as Egyptian street-vender shwarma, it was still satisfying. After dinner, I returned back to the hotel, played a game of Euchre, taught some people how to play Spar – the card game I learned in Ghana – and played some catchphrase. I would have liked to have gone to bed earlier, with a long day ahead, but such is life.

Once again, it is too early to be bright. We’re on the road again at 4:00, on a fairly comfortable bus to Maputo. I kept falling asleep – and leaning into another Trainee. Oops. Half way through the ride, at Xai Xai (pronounced Shy-Shy) I switched seats so I could play Scrabble with a couple of Trainees. We arrived in Maputo around 11 and we made a valiant return to Maputo Shopping Center.

We sat down at a shwarma place. Many of the stores in the shopping center are run by Middle Easterners, so I figured it would be pretty good…and it was. Good enough to have two. As if the afternoon couldn’t have got better, I found razor blades and shaving cream. I have become sick of using an electric razor; I never feel like I get a good shave. So I am very excited, even if they are two-blade crappy throw-aways.

I arrived back in Namaacha with a group of 10 other Trainees around 3:15. Exhausted from another long day of travel, I was greeted by minha mae with a bucket of hot water for a shower and a cup of coffee. I rested a bit before dinner and called it an early night.

I woke up refreshed and looking forward to Hub Day. Most of the morning was spent discussing our different experiences at different Volunteer sites, the first half in Portuguese, the second half in English. This was followed by a medical discussion on the light topic of Avian Flu. Not concerned by getting this, I worked on my homework as the medic spoke. I had anticipated getting mail – especially the package(s) that my parents sent weeks ago, but we were told that mail would arrive on Monday. Just after lunch, we received our results from our most recent oral language test. I was told that I was at Intermediate High level, which is where Peace Corps wants us at the end of training. So I am pretty happy.

Realizing that most of us would be tired from our travels, Peace Corps gave us the better part of the afternoon off. A few of us went down to the barraca to have a drink and play cards. I have continued my domination of Euchre, winning five straight games. I plan on never losing at this game. Playing cards for hours resulted in a late return home; we had tea around 6:00 and dinner around 8:15. I talked to family today – my parents in the afternoon, my grandparents in the evening. It was good to catch up with everyone and get some news from the other side of the world. Feeling tired, I once again called it an early night.

I woke up to the pitter-patter of a light rain, the tail end of a massive storm that blew through Namaacha last night. Minha mae was very happy this morning – it was like Christmas for her. Just about everyone was excited for the rain, but one house where a Trainee is staying flooded. As I walked out the door, my sister called and we talked as I made my way to class. Our language class learned how to write formal letters today. It will be a good skill to have, as we will need to make formal requests to our school directors.

Our late morning session, across town, was on loss and grieving. Scheduled for two hours, the entire session lasted about ten minutes. The only good thing about this was it left plenty of time for mail to be distributed. And there was plenty to go around. I received both packages – loaded with shoes, spices, and magazines – that my parents sent me. I got lucky in that my packages were unopened. Apparently, Christmas has come early to Namaacha, first with the rain and now with the packages.

I returned home, dropped off my packages at home, and headed to the house that was flooded. It happened that the house that flooded was the house of my best friend here. I offered to help out her host mae, but by the time I arrived the house was already clean. It was somewhat unbelievable.

After lunch, all of the English teachers reconvened for a session on classroom management and grade-keeping. Keeping grades is quite the process here. You don’t really appreciate the wonder of computer networks until you work within this grading system. Everything is handwritten multiple times in multiple places. Some Peace Corps Volunteers have developed a spreadsheet to help simplify and digitize some of it, but in the end, we all have to handwrite the grades that we turn in.

With the rest of the afternoon free, a group of us made our way to a barraca to play cards. I have finally been humbled at Euchre: I lost 3 out of 4 games. It is a team game, but I have to take most of the blame for the losses. The hardest part of being new at a team game is not being a liability to the team, and today I misplayed a lot of hands. As it is with Portuguese, I’m trying to remember that I’m new to Euchre, and I’m going to make my fair share of mistakes.

As the downpour continued, I made my home in damp darkness, occasionally illuminated by lightning. It’s cold enough that I could see my breath as I walked in the dark. Without streetlights, other senses take over. It was easy to hear where the water was flowing, so I knew to avoid certain areas. I managed to get home without stepping in any massive puddles. I ate dinner with minha mae and minha irma, read up on the current hockey season in a magazine and went to bed.

Saturday did not feel like Saturday; then again, Thursday didn’t feel like Thursday, and the same was true for Friday. Our internal calendars have been thrown off by all the travel this week. I went to language class, where we played a vocabulary game. I think our teacher has realized that at this point, there is not a lot more grammatical structure that she can teach, so the focus has shifted to using vocabulary and becoming comfortable with speaking.

After language class, we continued learning, although in a much more interested manner. My language group returned to my house, where minha mae was set to teach us how to make spring rolls. Eight Trainees, our teacher, and minha mae diced up onions, parsley, and cilantro; shredded cabbage, chicken, and carrots; and contributed to the cooking. After letting everything cool, we learned how to roll the spring rolls. Our work completed, I broke out the soy sauce which just arrived yesterday, and we enjoyed fruits of the labor.

Sufficiently fed after eating a small lunch with minha mae, I started washing clothes. We have a break from the rain, so today was a perfect day to have everything air-dry. I was prepared to wash clothes by myself, but one shirt in, the empregada stepped in and I was relegated to rinsing and hanging. I can’t say I was angered by this: it is much easier when a second person helps, regardless of who is washing and who is rinsing.

Exhausted, I was keen on relaxing for the remainder of the afternoon. But minha mae informed me as I was washing clothes that we were going to a wedding party. I wanted no piece of this. I went to my room, fell asleep, expecting her to wake me up. Her efforts to get me out of bed failed. She left, leaving me a text message saying that minha irma would take me to the party when I awakened. I thought I had dodged the situation. So I lied my way out of it. I told minha mae via text that I had a headache and I was going to stay home. I should feel bad about it, but I think I might have passed out at the party had I gone. As I relaxed, I received calls from my grandmother and my father.

The rest of the night was passed writing emails for sending later, cleaning up my room, and eating dinner. The day passed by in blur. And so did this week. Getting away from Namaacha certainly helped make the week pass by quickly. Six weeks in the books, the remainder of our time here should go by quickly. Just as the beginning of this experience was marked by a lot of “firsts” – and continues to be marked by such events – there will be some things reaching their conclusion. Next week is our last week of language, and the week after, we will lose the anxiety of worrying where we will be for the next two years. We also begin planning curriculum and teaching next week, so things are becoming a little more real, a little more job-relevant. Put that together with our site visits, it’s starting to feel a little more like we’re Volunteers and not Trainees.