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!
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| My awesome family from left to right: me, Nora (Tia), Aissa (Tia), Francisco (Pai), Ehrson (Irmão), Macita (Mãe), and Kelvin (Irmão) |
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| Ehrson and Kelvin doing some backyard acrobatics |
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| One of the front yards of a house where our language lessons to place |
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| The kids making a bolo (cake) for Ehrson's birthday |
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| Volunteers learning how to de-shell peanuts to mash and make peanut butter |
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| 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) |
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| The volunteers enjoying a nice Friday brew at the local bar after a long week of training |
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| 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 |
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| A park in Namaacha |
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| The volunteers organized a hike to the local waterfall, Cascadas |
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| As Cascadas |
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| An outdoor language lesson on a beautiful Namaacha day |
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| We had a cooking exchange day in which our language group and our busy mothers exchanged lunch dishes |
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| Doing some lunch prep work |
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| The gorgeous 'backyard' of the Hub |
