From Cá to Lá

Needless to say, a lot has happened since my last post! I have entered Phase 2 of training and find myself sitting here in my foster family's kitchen in the province of Ancuabe, Cabo Delgado preparing for breakfast. Meals are always something to look forward to as far as I'm concerned, but the meals here have been especially notable for their feast-like qualities so they become the joyful glue that holds my days together. We were warned that a lot of volunteers during Phase 2 experience a dearth of food or dearth of flavor... I'll have to keep my face somber and secrets deep as a they sing their dirges upon reunion. It's Saturday so things are a little more tranquilo, even more tranquilo than normal!

However, this is a very easily misunderstood statement in my new site. The name of the town I will be based in is Metoro, and it ends up being a town that Dad sprung up as a result of it's location at the intersection of the two main roads/highways in the province, the national highway that runs north-south and the interprovincial highway that runs east-west. The reason I mention this is that it means the community, though smaller than some others around it in terms of the amount of shops and infrastructure, ends up being a huge center of operations and struggles with many unique problems. Like the majority of our 7 Cabo Delgado volunteers, the NGO I'm partnered with is the Ariel Glaser foundation. One of the many things they do is partner with local health centers in communities to make sure everything is running smoothly and that data is being collected and submitted in a correct manner. As it's the end of the month, the team is super busy and I've been running all over with them. Yesterday we went to Ancuabe (the district capital) for the day and today the group is off to both Meza and Minhewene to finalize reports. Days begin early and have been going late.

I've gotten amazingly lucky again in terms of my host family here. I have a mãe who also happens to be my supervisor and she is awesome! Such a character and with great ideas and motivation as well. I'm very much looking forward to getting to know her better and working with her and the team more. Vamos à ver. Mas, por agora... Estamos juntos!

The crew working in Cabo Delgado with the Ariel Glaser Foundation. From left: Ben, Dannia, Liz, Isabella, myself and Camila. We went to site in the company car.

The local secondary school, run by Catholic religious. Not sure which order yet.

A view from above of Ancuabe, the district capital of our district

I don't have a site mate, but Dannia is only a 30-minute drive away if we can wrangle in a company car. Otherwise it takes closer to 2 hours with public transportation

We had a little pre-departure snack before our departure from the motel in Nampula (where we had our supervisor conference). Unfortunately, though maybe not surprisingly from this photo, the milk was sub par

The famous cathedral in Nampula

My name tag with the fateful name

Me and my supervisor at the conference. She also happens to be my mãe here in Metoro during Phase 2.

A snapshot from the lap of luxury. We stayed in a nice hotel for the conference before being shipped out.

One Down, Twenty-Six to Go

Well here we are just past the one month mark in Namaacha, Mozambique. It's only been roughly 3 weeks since my last post, which is fairly fantastic when examined through the lens of Mozambican time! ... Which is worth a quick look. I think we all have various stereotypes in place when it comes to 'Africa' (including an unfortunate tendency to collect all the tidbits of information we receive about any of the 54 countries on the continent, create​ a generalized 'Africa', and then project this new summarized identity onto each of the 54 countries individually) and some end up being true and some end up being false. If your idea of Mozambican time includes a relaxed relationship with deadlines, a slow walking pace and a reality in which the time-words we speak and the events that come to pass are more or less arbitrarily related, then you're spot on. However, if you haven't received th information that the underlying cause of this is the Mozambican value in socializing and deep, authentic relationships, then you're also missing something. One thing that becomes quickly clear when living here is that our behaviors and our reasons for committing them are vitally intertwined, but we often only see the former without understanding the latter. This has become apparent in both American assumptions of Mozambique and Mozambican assumptions of the U.S.

On a less philosophical note, this first month has been fantastic and I couldn't ask for a better family to be living with or a better group of trainees to be journeying with. We recently took our first LPI (Language Proficiency Interview) and I tested into intermediate-high level, which means I should be good to go as far as the language requirement for service is concerned (intermediate-mid), as long as I don't hit my head and lose half of it along the way somewhere. Also big news, today we turned in our site placement forms today and had our interviews regarding potential locations for service... We should know where we'll be placed within the next two weeks! That will likely be the subject of the next post, unless I somehow exceed all expectations and am able to dish out another post next week, we'll see!

Finally, though, here are some photos of my family and this first month!

My awesome family from left to right: me, Nora (Tia), Aissa (Tia), Francisco (Pai), Ehrson (Irmão), Macita (Mãe), and Kelvin (Irmão)

Ehrson and Kelvin doing some backyard acrobatics

One of the front yards of a house where our language lessons to place

The kids making a bolo (cake) for Ehrson's birthday

Volunteers learning how to de-shell peanuts to mash and make peanut butter

The 'German bakery' of Namaacha, which ends up actually being run by a Slovenian​ who is very friendly and makes a mean pão doce (sweet bread) 

The volunteers enjoying a nice Friday brew at the local bar after a long week of training

Sitting around waiting to get permission from the border guards to continue our hike to Tres Fronteires (Three Borders). We ended up not getting it because they said that there is now a new rule in place that requires us to have a special permission slip from the government

A park in Namaacha

The volunteers organized a hike to the local waterfall, Cascadas

As Cascadas

An outdoor language lesson on a beautiful Namaacha day

We had a cooking exchange day in which our language group and our busy mothers exchanged lunch dishes

Doing some lunch prep work

The gorgeous 'backyard' of the Hub