Kids and my kitten!

To see the rest, click here:

Megan in Mozambique

Exploring Mozambique

One of the best perks of being a volunteer in Mozambique is getting to explore this beautiful country. I’ve visited some absolutely gorgeous beaches (I’ve previously posted pictures from Bilene, the beach near me) and thanks to a recent Peace Corps conference, I’ve seen some of Maputo as well.

• Zavala, Inhambane: 3 volunteers and I went to a barbecue held by a group of Japanese volunteers and some Mozambicans on a remote beach. It took about 20 minutes through sand paths in the back of a pickup truck with a couple charcoal stoves and several live chickens to get there, but we nearly had the beach to ourselves as we ate grilled chicken and mussels.

• Vilankulos, Inhambane: This town is a big tourist destination, but a few volunteers and I visited a fantastic secluded beach lined with some of the tallest palm trees I’ve ever seen. One afternoon we went horseback riding on the beach and passed by an archeological site from the time of Arab traders. We stopped for a Mozambican lunch in a small town, and our guide told us about her experience as a white Zimbabwean who fled to Mozambique, and then on the return, we rode on a hill overlooking the beach.

• Maputo: I still haven’t gotten to see much of the capital city, but so far I’ve been very pleasantly surprised. A group of us visited the fish market for lunch; you choose your seafood in the market and bring it to one of the vendors, who then cook it to order. It’s definitely a tourist spot, with lots of souvenirs and counterfeit sunglasses being hawked, but it’s a great experience. The constantly replenished buckets of beer certainly help. I split grilled rock fish and prawns, and everything was fantastic. If you visit me, I will most certainly bring you here, as well as the craft market. The latter consists of dozens of vendors in a small park selling everything from artwork to capulana (printed African fabric) hand bags to jewelry made from coconuts.

So come visit!

Updates on My Life

Integration

Recently, I’ve had a lot of integration successes, and I’m known all over town as “Megus,” which to my dismay seems to have stuck as the Mozambican version of my name. I’m being invited more and more for meals by coworkers and neighbors; at one, I tried ox, which is good but has nothing on goat. Coworkers will frequently visit for tea before or after work. And now that the word is out that I like to passear, I’m being invited to do more things, from just going to the market or visiting someone’s house to attending the inauguration of a neighbor’s barraca (a stall selling cold drinks and essentials: eggs, detergent, oil, etc.), which included blessings, ribbon-cutting, and a served meal. In the near future, I will be visiting a coworker’s machamba (farm) and having a neighbor over to make banana pancakes together. The local language, changana, is definitely an obstacle to further integration, but I’m learning, albeit extremely slowly.

Kids

One of my absolute favorite parts about my life in Macia is my relationship with the kids in my dependencia (basically means we share a yard). Every day, at least 3 kids, plus any visiting relatives or neighbors, come over to color on my porch. Despite their refusal to smile in a picture, they love it. Throughout the day as well, they will pop over to say hi or play a game. I’m now known by some of the neighbors as the white girl with amiguinhos (little friends). Recently, a few 13-year-old girls have started visiting and inviting me to passear (walk around, hang out, etc). When they took me to visit their homes this past weekend, more kids kept joining until the group grew to nearly 20. I hope to form a “REDES” (translated, teen girls in development, education, and health; it’s a Peace Corps volunteer-led program) group soon as a secondary project (meaning, it’s not part of my work with my two organizations) soon.

Simba

Neighbors have referred to Simba as my daughter, which pretty much means that I have, in fact, become the crazy cat lady. The mother/grandmother of the kids came over one day to tell me Simba likes to eat xima (made from boiling water and corn flour; looks like mashed potatoes) and would come to their house to beg for it, so I’m an incompetent crazy cat lady at that. But the kids love her too, and when I was away at a conference they let Simba sleep in their bedroom.

She’s no longer a kitten, however, and I live in fear of her getting knocked up. As I learned by furiously googling cat pregnancy signs when she was looking bloated one day, the telltale sign is pink nipples. They were surprisingly hard to find, and I spent a half hour feeling like a predator, attempting to grope my cat as she tried to swipe me. I half expected Chris Hansen to show up at my door. No Lion King 2 yet, but I really need to find a vet. Her ladybits are a ticking time bomb. On the other hand, a benefit of her growing up is her fierce hunting skills. Lizards and bugs stand no chance against her, and last week she killed her very first rat. A proud mom, I ran to take a picture of baby’s first rodent, which she ate all of except for the hind legs and tail.

Work

Some highlights from the past several weeks include a couple activities I led with the youth groups of AJAAB. One Saturday afternoon, 14 kids plus 3 coworkers visited for guacamole and cake (6 of them), similar to the Dia de Mulher gathering I hosted for the women of my other organization. After the food, the kids colored, and each took a turn telling the group about their drawing. Check out the pictures! A different afternoon, even more kids and coworkers meet at a primary school for a couple hours of games. I started with a name game as an icebreaker, and then taught them a few American games. Freeze Dance (thanks for the idea, Casey!) to Michael Jackson was a huge it. My coworkers threw in a few Mozambican games, like a version of Telephone where you must repeat the phrase correctly; it you don’t or have to ask for a repeat, you’re out (naturally, with my Portuguese skills I didn’t stand much of a chance). Overall, it was a great bonding activity for the kids of the different youth groups as well as for my coworkers and me.

However, I’m still not working much. I have discussed my role more with my respective counterparts, though, and I have been brainstorming ideas for the coming months. With each group, I’m going to help with organizational development: creating a mission and vision, systems for documentation, and mechanisms for monitoring and evaluation. Other plans:

Associação Cristã: At the end of May, an activista and I will be attending a Peace Corps-led workshop that will include a troca de experiência (exchange of experience) and training on medicinal plants. The organization has about 20 activistas who perform home visits throughout the various bairros, but they receive no training. Therefore, I hope to develop training sessions to improve visits as my first project.

AJAAB: This organization has a lot of projects in development, and they have expressed a need for me to help devise systems of monitoring and evaluation (M&E) to accompany them. Fortunately, I received some training in M&E as part of our recent conference. To start, a couple coworkers and I will create M&E for home visits.

I’m excited to get working on these plans, as well as starting the REDES group. Reading Peace Corps resources to prepare, hanging out with kids, and integrating are taking up more of my time as well.

New pictures! Macia, Simba, and hosting Moz-style

My counterpart's grandkids. (Our houses share a yard.) They were much more excited that I received coloring books in a care package than it looks, I swear.

To see the rest, click the flag:

Megan in Mozambique

Community Integration: Weeks 11-14

I’m still not working much, but I’m making lots of progress integrating into the community. I’m getting to know more and more coworkers well and meeting more people. Pretty much every time I walk around town, I run into people I know. The grandkids of my counterpart (I live in his family’s yard) come over daily to color or play games. And I’ve earned some major street cred since I have been getting water from a nearby well for the past 3 weeks since we lost running water. Additionally, I’ve had a few really good days, as described below.

A Surprise Party

I went with AJAAB, one of my organizations, to see a dance performance by its group Crianças Para Crianças (Children for Children). Little did I know that the performance was part of a big, elaborate party for a woman’s christening. We had been playing games to pass the time for an hour and a half when a pick-up truck arrived with the woman and her family in back, all singing. The singing continued for a while, with all of the women slowly moving throughout the yard and finally into the house. Meanwhile, another large group of women had been cooking and setting up tables all day. We were served a feast, including chicken, goat, cow, and pork, all cooked various ways, in addition to large platters of salads, beets, French fries, rice, and cole slaw, as well as seemingly endless crates of soda and beer. The people at my table asked lots of questions about America, especially Obama. (Obama is HUGE here; you can easily find Obama flip flops, belts, notebooks, and even underwear in the market. I bought a pair of flip flops with Obama’s face and the question “Saviour of the world economy?” on them.)

Afterwards, various groups presented wrapped presents to the woman and her husband, both matching in red clothes. The presentations involved traditional songs and/or dance routines. Our girls group performed three routines to popular Mozambican songs and sang a religious song. At one point during the night, all the boys rushed the dance floor and started free styling, and one young boy was phenomenal. Apparently, it’s customary to stuff the pockets of great dancers with coins while they dance, and this kid made a killing. And finally, we ate absurd amounts of cakes and pastries, my favorite being one topped with fresh coconut, and then we were served more cake.

Dia Internacional da Mulher

I told a coworker, Sara, from the faith-based organization, that I wanted to have the activistas that I do home visits with over to my house one afternoon. This quickly turned into inviting all of the women of this organization for comida americana (American food) and bolo (cake), and the event just happened to coincide with International Women’s Day. After two days of preparations, 11 women came over to my house and several girls stopped by. Caitlin helped me during the party, and we followed all the Mozambican traditions, setting out straw mats to sit on and washing everyone’s hands by pouring water over them into a basin. It really could not have gone better. The women stayed for over 3 hours and seemed to really enjoy the food. Some stats of what this gathering entailed:

-5 cakes (3 banana/lemon and 2 pineapple upside down)

-7 loaves of bread

-7 liters of tea

-A giant bowl of guacamole containing 10 huge avocados

-20 oranges (brought by my counterpart’s wife from a tree in our yard)

-22 plates & 16 mugs

-4 straw mats

-1 American getting her hair braided (Caitlin)

And I’m doing it all over again this Saturday afternoon with my coworkers and the girls’ group from my other organization.

Simba

A few weeks ago, a stray kitten appeared on my porch one night. After leaving bowls of tuna outside for a couple nights and having the requisite Pride Rock ceremony, Simba officially became my pet. She’s not the brightest (one week she would repeatedly climb onto the roof and then forget how to get down) and she's a bit of an attention whore, but she’s cute and fun, like a young Britney Spears. But barring any future shotgun weddings or head-shaving incidents, having my first-ever real pet is a lot of fun. Sometimes we will meow back and forth or I will sing songs like “Simba, Winnie the Simba” (to the tune of Winnie the Pooh Bear, shocking I know) to her. I just need to train her to meow along to Lady Gaga with me. Clearly once Caitlin moves out, I’m in serious danger of becoming Macia’s resident crazy cat lady.

Simba just jumped from my lap onto the keyboard (Iz can type blog?) so I leave you with these words of wisdom:

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmkj\]nhhhhhh

‘’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’

Favorite Quotes

Random African-but-not-Mozambican man in a bar: “I can tell you’re not from here.”

Anne: “Oh really? What tipped you off?”

African man (not hearing Anne’s joke): “You are for-Reagan, like me.” (He meant foreign.)

Me: “I can speak Portuguese”

Random boy: “No you can’t.”

I laugh and try to walk away.

Boy: “I’m going to take a bath, and then we’re going to converse.”

Me: “I’m working.”

Boy: “I love you.”

Susanna, a coworker: “When your namorado visits, I’m going to steal him. We’re going to go to America, and you’re going to get married here. You can have my husband.”

Japanese volunteer: “Where in the United States do you live?”

Me: “Delaware.” [Typical blank look] “It’s a state near New York.”

Japanese volunteer: “I’m from Hiroshima.”

Awkward silence followed by awkward laughter.

High school student: “How old are you?”

Me: “23.”

Student: “You grew a lot.”

Coworker, looking very concerned and pointing at my freckles: “Are those bug bites?”

Me: “No, everyone with white skin has them.”

Coworker shoots me look that says “WTF?”

Kids singing along to a Rick Ross song: “Every day you muscle me.” (The lyrics are “Every day I’m hustling.”)

Ridiculous Things I Hear Regularly:

Woman: “You need to learn Changana.”

Me: “Yes, I want to.”

Woman proceeds to speak at me in a stream of Changana.

Me: “Boa tarde.”

Man: “Boa tarde.Tudo bom?”

Me: “Sim, obrigada.” (The basic greetings: good afternoon, all well?, yes thanks)

Man proceeds to ask me to “walk around to get to know each other” or to propose marriage.

Adjusting to Site: Weeks 4-10

Pouco a Pouco (Little by Little): Working with My Organizations

The beginning of my Peace Corps service has definitely been a test in patience. First were the holidays. Then came the rainy season on crack. Throw in lots of demorrar-ing and atrasar-ing (taking a long time and running late), and it’s not until mid-February that I finally have my first full week of work. So what did I do for those first two months? I cleaned my house from top to bottom. I painted parts of my kitchen (pictures coming soon) and had curtains and tablecloths made. I read A LOT. And I watched three seasons of True Blood, five seasons of How I Met Your Mother, a season and a half of Glee, and various movies. And just when I was about to lose it, Caitlin, a PCV in a nearby town, moved in with me for a while because her house flooded due to the aforementioned absurd amount of rain. She’s been living with me for three weeks now, her organization is still looking for a new house, and it’s been a lot of fun.

The rain had such a dramatic effect on my work schedule because both of my organizations, Associação Crista and AJAAB, are so community-based. They don’t have their own offices; Associação Crista uses a local Bible school to do occasional paperwork, and AJAAB has its meetings on the porch of a driving school or in a classroom at the secondary school. All events are either outdoors or require a significant amount of walking for some of the attendees or leaders. When it rains, everything shuts down.

Now that I am working, it’s going well so far. I’ve mainly been accompanying activistas on home visits to check on and offer support to orphans and vulnerable children (OVCs), elderly widows, and the ill throughout the various neighborhoods of Macia and sitting in on meetings. Slowly I am seeing more and more of the activities of each organization, such as visits to an escolinha (pre-school) with AJAAB and community palestras (lessons) about HIV prevention with Associação Crista.

Pouco a Pouco: Community Integration

Community integration is also a long process. Macia is centered on its large market along the EN1, a major roadway in southern Mozambique, effectively making the town a large road stop. While this brings lots of benefits for me, not the least of which is the increased variety of produce and goods for sale, it also made integration more difficult initially. My first few weeks were full of teenage boys surrounding me trying to sell bags of cashews and cell phone credit and neighbors giving me “what the fuck” looks when I greeted them in Portuguese. But slowly, as people see me walking around town more and more, they realize I’m not just a South African or Portuguese tourist passing through on my way to the beach, and now it’s unusual for my greetings to go unanswered.

It’s a process that will continue throughout my two years of service, and it certainly has its ups and downs. For example, just this past week I invited a woman, who had previously invited me over her house, and her two teenage daughters over to my house for cake. I made a cake, bought refrigerated fruit juice to serve, and had my straw mat ready to go. The afternoon came and went, and they never showed up or responded to my texts. And to add insult to injury, the power went out and I was never able to bake the cake. But when one Mozambican woman stands you up, three others sit down on your porch after an afternoon of home visits and want to be served food and drink. So only a few days later I finally had my first Mozambican hosting experience, and luckily I had made plenty of pasta salad earlier in the day. The woman approved of the salad and plan to invite me over to their houses to teach me to make Mozambican dishes, which I’m really excited about.

Bugs

When I first moved into my house, cockroaches were a major problem. As soon as darkness fell, 2+ inch-long roaches would invade. I sought refuge under my mosquito net but could still hear the big ones roaming around my room. Thankfully, after thoroughly fumigating my house with two cans of the bug killer Baygon, I have emerged victorious. The morning after spraying, it was both horrifying and satisfying to find 23 corpses in my kitchen alone.

Unfortunately, a sudden proliferation of spiders has since appeared. One night, I went out to my porch to enter my kitchen for some toilet paper (my bedroom and kitchen are not connected), and froze in horror. Right outside my kitchen door was a huge skeletal-looking tan spider. It took me about one second to surrender; using notebook paper was a much lesser evil than facing that monster. Turns out it was a baboon spider, a type of tarantula.

Thankfully that monster has yet to make a second appearance, but my bathroom has become reminiscent of the basement scene at the end of Arachnophobia. After painting my house all day, I took a shower much later than I normally would. When I got in the shower and turned the water on, something big and dark ran on the wall mere inches away from me. It’s pretty normal to have lizards around my shower, but I looked to make sure and proceeded to scream. It was a spider with a 4-inch diameter, no exaggeration, and huge eyes. I’m sure of the measurement because after I jumped out of the shower I was frozen in fear for a few minutes, just staring at the spider as I whimpered. Eventually I made a dash to the kitchen for some Baygon and then unloaded about half a can onto the creature. It started to run and made it out the door by the time I stopped screaming and grabbed a shampoo bottle to chuck at it. The target was hit, and I squashed it some more for good measure. The next morning, all that remained were some chicken footprints right outside my bathroom and shit on my porch. Its brethren still make regular appearances throughout my house, especially the bathroom, but after battling with motherfucking Grendel, 1-3 inch spiders don’t seem so bad. But I do scream like Billy Madison after his classmate pees his pants each time.

Cooking

I have never enjoyed cooking; through college, I relied heavily on lean cuisines and the like. But two factors have led me to take up learning to cook as a hobby here: I love to eat, and I have had absurd amounts of free time. And since Caitlin moved in with me, cooking has only become more elaborate. I’m working my way through “You Can Make It in Mozambique,” a Peace Corps cook book. I’m not going to be making anything gourmet anytime soon, this certainly is no Julie & Julia, but thank God for that since that would make me the annoying Amy Adams character with a terrible haircut. Highlights so far include: tortillas, guacamole, pineapple salsa, home fries, vegetable soup, vegetarian chili, garlic bread, hummus, tomato sauce, and pineapple-upside down cake. All from scratch, bitches. And the baking, sans oven (I make a “dutch oven” by putting small stones inside a large pot, putting the baking tin on top of the stones inside the pot, and then the lid on top of the pot). And from this hobby, another hobby has emerged: hunting for spices and other ingredients in various towns. Look for “You Can Make It in Mozambique: Now with New Revisions by Megan Lawless and Caitlin Rosenberg” in stores in approximately two years.

My Most Embarrassing Experience

If you read my last blog post, then you know that my stomach has been struggling here. Unsurprisingly, it played a starring role in my most embarrassing experience thus far in Mozambique. I had actually been doing really well until one fateful Thursday afternoon, which because of rain, was my first day of work all week. My coworker and I were meeting people in Bairro (neighborhood) 5 when the stomach pains started. I asked to use the bathroom, which turned out to be an uncovered but walled space with large stones on the ground. Only large stones. Confused, I asked the dona da casa (woman of the house) were the pit was located. Turns out, there is none. The bathroom is just a place to fazer xixi (pee) and tomar banho (bathe). Two men then took me to the yard of a neighborhood with a pit latrine. There wasn’t much of a pit left as the hole was less than a foot deep, which made it impossible not to see that it was full of maggots. But when nature calls in Africa, she stalker-dials you until you answer, so I used it. A bit later, while waiting for yet another person (I spend a significant amount of time waiting, clearly), my stomach started hurting again. I explained to my counterpart that I was sick and needed to go home. So they started walking me back and asked if I wanted to use a bathroom, again. Another complete stranger graciously led me to their bathroom, which had a (seatless) toilet, a real luxury here. After an embarrassing amount of time, we went to the meeting. My coworker officially introduced me to the leader of Bairro 5, and we all sat for a while as people from my organization and various community leaders talked in Changana, the local dialect. Even though I only know a few phrases in Changana, it was clear I was the topic of discussion (looks like diarrhea is pretty much the same in every language). At the beginning, a coworker translated into Portuguese that the leader said warm Coca-Cola would help my stomach, and thus everyone was served sodas, mine warm of course. And at the end, one of the attendees thanked my coworker for bringing the doente (sick person) to the meeting, since everyone got sodas because of me.

As mortifying as the experience was, I couldn’t help but be impressed by how understanding and compassionate everyone was. Without hesitation, several complete strangers allowed me to use their bathrooms, which clearly is not something to take for granted in impoverished communities. Additionally, everyone had such great senses of humor about the situation. It’s hard to imagine a family simply not having a latrine, as was the case in the first house, but that’s not uncommon here. But really, the take home lesson is that given a week with me going stir-crazy due to rain, my stomach will choose the only two hours I get to work to be a total bitch.