Who are all these people who keep calling me professor...?

On the first day of school in America, you usually show up at 7 A.M.: new clothes, new backpack, and new school supplies. Teachers read and pass out syllabi, you forget your locker combination a bunch of times, and you hope no one gives homework on the first day. Students and teachers are, collectively, excited and nervous for the following weeks. 

On the first day of school in Mozambique, Jamie and I showed up at 7 A.M.: eight students and one other teacher in the entire school. The class schedule was still incomplete. Each classroom should have about fifty students, according to enrollment, and there are thirty two high school teachers. We waited around for a bit, then everyone went home.

Bem Vindo a Mariri

Mariri is very, very mato. Mato is Portuguese for “in the middle of absolutely nowhere.” Our town lies 10 miles off the main road, and is isolated due to its lack of a market, electricity, or running water. Seriously, no one comes to Mariri.

I think that maybe two people in our town own private cars, and there is one chapa (public bus) that goes to the city once every day, but everyone else rides bicycles or motorbikes.  Needless to say, we don’t get out much! Fortunately, our house is less than a five minute walk from the school, so the transportation nightmare doesn't haunt us on a daily basis. However, we don’t have access to groceries or supplies without going into the next town, so we’ve been eating a lot of stuff like rice and canned fish, rice and onions, rice and potatoes, rice and water, etc…

Mariri is, however, beautiful! I feel like I live in a park. The school grounds were part of a mission and seminary before the war, so there are many mature mango and papaya trees, as well as palm trees, banana plants, and gorgeous Portuguese trees. The ground is very sandy, and right now the entire area is very lush and green; we have three lakes (full of catfish) and a beautiful green mountain. 

The town consists of three neighborhoods, one of which is at the top of the mountain. We climbed it last week to attend the church (yup, I climb a mountain to go to church!), which was an experience in and of itself. For many of the kids in the very isolated neighborhood, Jamie and I were probably the first foreigners they had ever seen, and they all repeatedly called us “white people” in the local language. The church experience was interesting, too: communion was distributed out of a Tupperware, I’m pretty sure the presider wasn’t actually a priest, and the altar boy asked me to marry him.

It was a cool cultural experience, though, and Jamie and I are planning to go back in order to better integrate in the community. And that mountaintop view isn’t too bad.

Training Recap

Bom Dia! I have successfully completed Peace Corps training and have officially become one of the 200,000 PCVs sworn in over the last 51 years. Clearly, I completely neglected my blog throughout training; there was one computer in our town, and 68 trainees, so I was a bit out of touch for 10 weeks. To recap training:


We arrived in Mozambique on September 27th, and stayed two days in the capital, Maputo. The city is enormous (close to two million people), beautiful, and very scary. The group then traveled down to the city of Namaacha, about an hour southwest. Namaacha sits on the three borders of Mozambique, South Africa, and Swaziland. It was originally a Portuguese vacation town, built in the mountains, so it was generally very cold, rainy, and non-Africa-y.

Each volunteer was adopted by a host family, and mine was amazing! My host mom, Mae Elisa, has two adult daughters (Melita, 30, and Lotinha, 22), and each of them have a son (Lay, 9, and Donavan, 4). There was another little girl (Elsa, 6) who lived with us, but I never figured out who her parents were. It's a very common practice in Mozambique to take in the children of your relatives in exchange for an extra pair of hands around the house. Elsa was loved and cared for, but she always ate in the kitchen, slept on the floor, and never had as nice of clothes as her cousins.

Elsa, 6

Donavan, 4

Departure

I deserve some kind of award for the amount of stuff I have fit into my suitcases.

I am officially packed, though flirting dangerously with the 100lb weight limit, and now just finishing up some sappy goodbyes in St. Louis and spending my last 24 hours with the family. I fly out of Lambert at 6 A.M. on Tuesday, then will be in Philly on the 25th to meet my fellow Moz 19 trainees. We're driving to JFK, then flying 15 hours to Johannesburg, and finally boarding one last plane for Maputo on the 27th. From there, we launch directly into 10 weeks of intensive language and culture training as I prepare for two years of teaching.

M-I-Z!!

Last week, my spectacular friends threw me a Halloween party, a Thanksgiving dinner, and a mini-Christmas. I got to attend my last Mizzou tailgate, had one last night bartending, and cried leaving Jones Hall for the very last time. Leaving Columbia was much harder than I thought it would be, and it's hard to think about not going back for over two years.

Countdown to Staging

Welcome to the 27-month chronicle of my Peace Corps adventures in Mozambique! I am officially three weeks away from staging in Philly (but I’ve been packed for about 2 months…). To recap, I’m slated to teach chemistry in the Secondary Science Education program. Yep, I’ll be teaching a subject in Portuguese that I’m not sure I’m qualified to teach in English. This may end tragically.

Rather than actually studying Portuguese, I’ve been spending my summer working, traveling, and drinking lots of domestic beer. I think I’ve technically been homeless and/or a squatter since graduation, and must say that it’s highly underrated! Since May I’ve called at least six different couches home, but in exchange have had some excellent spontaneous adventures (including a tour of every Indian casino in central Oklahoma).