Homestay Week 9: Sickness...Are We at Site Yet?

I woke up around midnight in an ungodly sweat. The night never cooled off and there was no breeze to speak of. I tried to go back to sleep, but it was just too hot. I finally gave in: I opened the door to my room – which I never do at night – and let the air move across from my window to my door. The temperature in the room dropped substantially and I was able to go back to sleep for a little while.

I managed to get through the remainder of the night until about 7:00 – minor victory. I had a lot on my schedule and I could have easily let it get away from me, but I actually managed to get everything important done – another victory, this one a little bigger. The only downside was the lack of internet at the internet café. That would have been just too sweet.

I started my laundry late because we were short bins for washing. Minha irma found one when she returned from church and I was off and running around 11:00. Today was the first time I did laundry sozinho – alone. I felt like I needed to do it solo because I probably won’t have some help at my site for a while. Also, minha mae is seriously under the weather and I didn’t want her to waste her energy helping me on something I could do by myself. It took a solid two hours plus, but I think I did a pretty good job. My whites are white and there are no major dirt splotches.

Following lunch, I ran over to one of the teacher’s houses to get my lesson plan checked for the day. There seems to be less excitement for Model School this week, probably because most of us just want to get to our sites! The rest of the day was pretty typical of Sunday: a soda at the barraca, conversations with my parents and grandparents, good dinner, and an early bedtime.

Two nights in a row now, I haven’t slept well. This time, I can blame it on the malaria medication. Running on three or four hours of bad sleep, I was fortunate again to teach third – I had sufficient time to wake up. We started with almost no students today which is a shame because, being World AIDS Day, all of us had planned lessons revolving the topic. So instead of having two classrooms of four people each, we joined forces with the other tenth grade class to have a room of eight. Over the first hour students trickled in, and by the end of the first class, we had more than 30 students. It was actually really nice to teach to a full classroom.

In the afternoon, we had an extensive session on HIV/AIDS. It was presented by some of the Trainees from the Health group. It was beautifully presented – simplified, relevant, clean-cut. I returned home to a mae recovering from a good cold. Her being sick hasn’t helped my Portuguese education: not only is she mumbling, but she is also speaking Shangana whenever she is not speaking to me. I know that second part doesn’t seem like a big deal, but even when she is not talking to me, I try to listen in to figure out what she is talking about.

With just a pair of weeks left here in Namaacha, I’m trying to learn as much as I can about local cooking. Not that I haven’t been learning along the way, but now I know what I like and I want to make in the future. Tonight, I learned how to cook spinach the way minha cooks it. If spinach is available – which it may not be – I’ll be cooking it up at least once a week.

I continue to learn more and more about my future site. Unfortunately, the Volunteer who is leaving the site is not able to come to Namaacha, as originally planned, but she did leave me extensive notes. It seems that I should get very used to eating pasta, rice, tomatoes, and onions. It also appears that there are hippos – yes hippos – in the river where I will be. Excited? Absolutely. It is also a fair distance, some 65 kilometers, away from the national highway. As she said, I am going to be in the “mato” – the bush. No running water, three hours of electricity a day, hippos and canoes: it’s going to be an interesting two years.

Running off another bad night’s sleep, I was happy that I wasn’t scheduled to teach a lesson. Although I had a lesson planned, I was told yesterday afternoon that I would be off the hook. That was until one of the teachers scheduled to teach didn’t show up. With a lesson already prepared, I was happy to teach, but I would be fighting through a headache. The lesson actually went really well albeit a bit short. Considering it was pretty much done on the fly, I was very satisfied. Following classes, we had a brief session on how to design tests, which we will be giving out tomorrow.

I spent a good bit of my lunch hour at the internet café – which was finally working – to send off some emails and read news. I won’t have a ton of access to internet cafés at my site, so I’m soaking this in. After lunch, we had three sessions – one on pets (I can’t have a pet monkey or hippo – bummer), how to negotiate between American and Mozambican values, and one on the emotional rollercoaster that we have been on and won’t be getting off for the next two years.

For the entire time here, we’ve been working out of one of our two checked bags. We got our second bag today to start repacking for the long haul to site. Even though my province is technical a province to which they would normally fly, my site is far enough south that we will be driving to it. We also received bike helmets for if we want to buy a bike. And a select few of us – myself included – received lifejackets, because we will have to cross a river via canoe to get to our sites. I couldn’t make that up if I tried.

We got an emotional lift when packages arrived. And I got one, from my aunt, filled with Oreos – hello, beautiful! – Caesar salad dressing, ketchup, and magazines. All things that I definitely need. Normally our day would end here – relishing in the glory of American cookies and news, but no, we had a special treat today: the beginning of local language class. I would have been more excited for this if I didn’t (still) have a headache and I didn’t have more work to do after. My head just about exploded. It’s been difficult enough learning Portuguese with little benefit of a translation, so you can imagine how hard it would be to learn Ndau (think “endow” but make the first syllable as short possible). It was a hopeless effort. I was done, but my day wasn’t. I still had to write up the test for tomorrow’s class. Dehydrated and still with a headache, I powered through it.

I got home and cracked into those Oreos immediately. The bolachas here just don’t even come close to an Oreo. This was paradise in blue wrapping. There might as well have been crack squished between those two crispy cookies because I was craving them the rest of the night. But I must restrain myself, for I only have two packages, and I won’t be receiving a package with Oreos for a long time.

I barely made it through dinner, and went to be almost immediately after, hoping for at least one good night’s sleep this week. All in all, a rollercoaster Tuesday

My wish was answered: I slept incredibly. But I awakened feeling less than 100%. Something wasn’t right – my chest was tight, and the headache that was bothering me was still hanging around. I thought it could be dehydration, but I had been doing a better job of drinking more water.

Today, Wednesday, was the last day of model school. The kids received a brief review of the English material and then had a chemistry test before taking the English. As we were told would occur, every single on of them cheated in one way or another. It’s a fight that we are going to face at our site and we’ve been told that we just need to pick our battles, figure out a way to regulate it, and punish when necessary. In the end though, there are going to be plenty of cases when people cheat and they both get the answer wrong. Things probably even out in the end.

Although the students had many questions throughout the test, and the test was a different format than what they were used to, they did surprising well. We only had two students fail the test and a couple got pretty close to 100 percent. Maybe the test was easy, maybe the kids were smart, maybe we just did a good job of preparing them; it was probably a combination of all three.

Following an extended lunch hour, we a couple of sessions on the positives and negatives of working with Mozambican counterparts. I would have paid more attention if I wasn’t feeling so miserable. By the end of the afternoon, my health had deteriorated to the point where I actually called the medical office. I had to put aside my disdain for doctors and medical advice for a moment, and it was probably for the better. With the symptoms I was having – raging headache, sore throat, tightness in my chest – the said I probably had an upper respiratory infection. Fun.

I went home and popped some meds that we have all been supplied since day one. After opening my medical kit, my room smelled like a hospital – disgusting. I wanted to just relax, but that wasn’t going to happen. Minha mae took me out of the house to a tailor’s house to have a shirt made. It looks like we’re all getting matching shirts (for the guys) and skirts (for the girls). Thankfully, the whole thing only took about ten minutes to get measured. We returned home and had tea, followed closely by dinner. I was barely able to eat anything, not because I wasn’t hungry, but because I just wanted to go to bed. Before going to sleep, I burned a CD for the boy who was living in the house last week, and has returned this week.

I was sleeping well through the night when I was awakened by minha mae at three in the morning. She wanted to call someone from Peace Corps to let them know what was going on. I told her to wait – I mean, it’s three in the morning, it can wait. She woke me up again at 6, to tell me that she had called Peace Corps and that a doctor was coming to the house at some point. I went back to sleep until about 7:30, when she brought in coffee and bread for me. I was feeling a little better after popping an ibuprofen, but definitely not close to 100 percent. I was in no condition to go to the party that was being thrown for the model school students. So I spent the rest of the morning packing up my room: Peace Corps cars are coming by today and tomorrow to pick up our boxes for site delivery. Throughout the morning, the music I had put on a CD for the boy was playing. It was very strange to hear coming from somewhere other than my iPod.

I was supposed to have a set of interviews with some of the Peace Corps higher-ups at 2:30, but I received a call around 12:40, saying the interview was at, um, 12:40. Apparently, the schedule was changed in the morning and nobody had told me. It didn’t matter really. I made my way down to the interview, breezed through it, and went on with my day.

I was actually feeling good in the afternoon – almost healthy. I read a magazine, finished packing, and watched some “Curb Your Enthusiasm” with a friend. I was hoping that I had turned the corner health-wise and that I’d be fully recovered by the weekend. The remainder of my evening was spent writing letters to my students from last year. They wrote me letters a couple of weeks ago, and though I have yet to receive them, I can already envision them. And more than that, I already have some idea of the emotion that they will bring out of me: unrestrained joy, joined with tears.

Once again, I was sleeping well through the night when, once again, I was awakened at 3:00. This time, it was the rain and thunder that got me. We got a good rain last night. This place needs some consecutive weeks, not hours, like that. I went back to bed until about 6:30. And continuing from last night, I actually felt pretty good.

All of the Trainees convened for our final Hub Day as Trainees. I felt alright until an hour into it, when my health rapidly deteriorated. The doctor, who gave a talk on malaria today, thought it was what he originally diagnosed, but decided it wouldn’t hurt to take a malaria test. The whole process took about ninety minutes, and it would have been longer had one of the teachers not played the “Corpo da Paz card.” I skipped a line of well over 60 people. It’s the first time that I’ve been uncomfortable here with excessive staring. It was well-deserved though. They hooked my up with some meds and I was good to go the rest of the day.

After popping some meds, I started to feel better. I ate an amazing lunch: samoosas, these fried bean patties of goodness called begias (butchered spelling, I’m sure), and a cheese sandwich. We sat in the shade and enjoyed a cool breeze that blew under the tree.

The afternoon was nothing special for a Friday afternoon. We had one more brief session before making our way to the barraca. I spent a good amount of time playing cards with a couple people, which was good fun, and drank plenty of water (this was no time for anything alcoholic). I returned home, gave myself a much-needed haircut, ate dinner, and called it a night.

I struggled to fall asleep, but the sound of rain hypnotized me pretty quickly. I slept uninterrupted until 6:30, which I can consider a victory, but refused to get out of bed until 8:00. After all, this is the weekend, and weekends are meant for being lazy. Minha mae wouldn’t let me wash clothes, or even help, so I really had nothing to do for the better part of Saturday. Another Trainee I went to “Shoprite” – the twice-weekly open-air market named after a popular store in Mozambique – to buy some capulanas (large pieces of cloth used for anything from skirts to tying a baby to one’s back) that will be made into curtains, table cloths, whatever I need really. On the way back, we stopped in the real market so my friend could buy some water. While there, I finally found a pair of brown shoes that fit my giant feet. The saleswoman, who was happy to see me, wanted 200 metacais for the shoes, but I played the “Volunteer card” and got her down to 150 – about 7 dollars. Now I just need to find a pair of similar black shoes.

After one of my favorite lunches – rice, non-oily chicken, and spicy tomato sauce – I took the most amazing two-hour nap. The doctor said I need fluids and sleep, so sleep I shall. As my clothes dried, the rain started coming again. This is three days in a row with rain, which is good. This place is finally starting to turn green. All the work that the women did the past couple of weeks – tilling the land and planting, all with children on their backs – is finally paying off. We all just hope that, at some point, the rain will stick around. This place’s future in so many ways is tied to the rain. When it rains, there is food, and when there is food people can sell. It’s not just about eating. In America, time is money; here in Namaacha, rain may be more precious than gold.

There’s not a whole lot to do here, especially when it is raining – it’s not like we can just jump in the car (we’re not allowed to drive here) and go to Starbucks (I’m a good 7,000 miles away from a tall chai whatever). It’s just about killing time. The days go slow, but luckily the weeks go fast. And with this week coming to an end, we are left with but one in Namaacha.

As much as I have enjoyed the place and the people here, it’s time to go – for the reasons just mentioned. Even though this place is great, this isn’t “home” for the next two years – our sites are. And even though minha mae has been great, I’m ready to be independent again. A Volunteer told us this week that training is the worst part of Peace Corps; after this, it’s a piece of cake. I can see why. We’re used to living independently. We’re used to having some sense of belonging in a place. Ironically, I’m sure that within weeks of getting to site, I will be longing to be with my “family” again.