The Rest of Training

Ups & Downs

A motto of the Peace Corps is “the toughest job you’ll ever love.” As the current volunteers have warned us, the next two years will be filled with some of the highest highs and lowest lows of our lives. During training, it is not nearly that extreme, but each day brings its own ups and downs. Overall, however, I'm very happy with the experience and very excited to get to site.

Ups:

• Finding treats: We’ve found Pringles and refrigerated Kit Kats at a gas station here and dark chocolate at a grocery store in Matola, a nearby town.
• Being served chicken.
• Receiving messages, calls, and care packages. Another shameless plea: even if it takes me a while to respond, keep sending me messages. Chances are the weak internet connection on my phone will let me read but not respond or I can read them but am waiting to type up a long response on my computer. Either way, I read them.
• Getting tons of movies and TV shows to put on my external hard drive from other trainees. I’m currently addicted to Mad Men.
• Playing Taboo, Bananagrams, and my all-time favorite card game Asshole at a baraca.
• Hearing juicy fofoca (Portuguese for gossip).

Downs:

• Finding bed bug bites: Realized that I had bed bugs just as it proceeded to storm for the next few days. Not very helpful when you need to put your mattress out in the sun.
• Being served canned sardines. With onions. For breakfast.
• Larium dreams: A major side effect of mephaquin, the anti-malarial medicine I’m required to take is extremely vivid dreams, usually for a couple nights after taking my weekly dose. My dreams are frequently scary (woke up thinking there was a rat in my bed) or frustrating.
• Unwanted roommates: having a cockroach run across my back while in bed (I then killed it and left it smashed on the wall as a warning to its brethren); hearing rats during the night.

My First Birthday in Moz

Thanks for all of the birthday messages! I really appreciated them. Sorry it’s taken me so long to respond to them; as I previously said, it can be difficult to respond. We celebrated at the bar after class, and I had a great day. The only negative was the lack of acknowledgment of my birthday by my host family (yes, they knew it was my birthday), but culturally, birthdays are not nearly as important here.

Comida Americana

During one afternoon of Portuguese class, our host moms showed us how to cook a traditional Mozambican meal of coconut-flavored rice, roast chicken, and a sauce of cooked pumpkin leaves and ground peanuts. Then one Saturday morning, each language group cooked an American meal for their host moms in return. After our host moms dressed us each in a traditional capulana skirt and a lenço (head scarf), my group made French toast with bananas, caramelized apples, and homemade syrup with hash browns. Cooking American food under Mozambican conditions proved to be quite a challenge. We had no cinnamon or vanilla for the French toast, pots instead of skillets, and two “burners” on a charcoal stove. The hash browns took over 45 minutes to heat up and were more of a mashed potatoes-hash browns hybrid, and some of the French toast was a bit burnt since we couldn’t regulate the temperature. However, our moms loved it, and it felt great to serve them for a change. My host mom has since made French toast twice for me when I need a packed lunch, which is super sweet.

Beach Weekend (See pictures!)

We had three free days this past weekend for a mental health break. About 50 of us trainees rented a couple beach houses in Bilene, a beach in Gaza Province about 6 hours away. The beach closest to the houses was on a beautiful lagoon with clear water and no waves. It was very peaceful; there were very few other tourists, just a few wooden boats. My site is only 30 minutes away from this beach, so I will definitely be going often. We lounged on the beach, ate lots of pizza, drank, had a dance party with a DJ one night, and played Asshole (president three times in a row, bitches!). The weekend was great break from training, and now we have less than 2 weeks left until swear in!