Angonia for the Holidays

     With no "out of country" vacation time, a 3 month ban on travel outside of your site's province, and limited Mozambique friends or just acquaintances at site.  The boys of Chitima took a Holiday weekend trip to the coldest place in Mozambique that just so happens to be in the hottest  province of Moz.  Sound backwards? Yeah well it’s Africa so just roll with it like everything else illogical we volunteers experience.  For Christmas 2015 and my first Christmas away from family, my roommate and I traveled up to our fellow (Tetie) volunteers‘ house, Alejandra and Michelle, in Angonia Tete for some holiday cheer, good company, and great food. 
    The Chitima Holiday Vacation started the day before Christmas Eve after locking up the house and leaving Tximanga a boat load of cat food to hold him over for the vacay.  We headed down to the oven of a capital, Tete City, to meet up with the other three Moz25 volunteers we would be spending Christmas with and do some holiday shopping  for our secrete Santas and white elephant gifts.  Also some grocery shopping for the holiday meals to get important things you just can’t ever find at any volunteers’ site like, CHEESE.

 (Cramming food outside the store into our backpacks for the pleasantly unpleasant 4-hr chappa ride.)

     (Yeah that's an entire gallon bag of cheese, the cravings are a real thing)

     After the grocery shopping mission, and a 4 1/2-hr 22 person minivan taxi ride; we all arrived in the delightfully cool village of Angonia.  Really though.  After leaving Tete City that morning which was around 100 degrees and slowing feeling the breeze in the taxi turn from scorching to refreshingly cool.  It was amazing to step out into a place that was a comfortable low 80s with a nice breeze.  For a hot minute it felt like I had ended up back in the Midwest. There were pine trees and green grass with the sense of seasons changing as you could feel the crisp wind bringing some rain with it.  A little rain and a couple days in the high 70s, this was definitely the closest thing to a white Christmas in Africa that you could get.
    The next 2 ½ days we did all the classic Christmas events we could: listened to holiday music (Michael Buble on blast), watched Christmas movies (White Christmas, The Grinch, and of course Elf), made awesome breakfest and dinners along with Christmas COOKIES, and opened actual wrapped Christmas gifts. 

 (Santa musta been sweating bullets when he made the trek out here)

 (BACON, french toast with apricot jam, and  REAL coffee)

(It was a bad ass Hawaiian Tee and a slick ball cap. Thanks Ale!)

 (A whole tray of BACON, thanks to our Zimbabwe ex-pat friend Blaine.)

     After all the fun and cheer and absolute bliss of being in weather below 90 degrees; Drew and I headed back to Chitima the day after to get back Tximanga, house projects, and some much needed laundry. 
    So, even though I wasn’t spending the Holidays with all you people I love and miss, hope ya’ll had an awesome Christmas yourselves! It was a good Christmas in Africa and I was very thankful to spend it with a good group of people and be able to enjoy each others company and our attempts at having a traditional westerner holiday with a few little twists. 

(And the gift that keeps on giving continues still in Africa.... Getting Iced)

Breaking Radio Silence

Hey Fam, Friends, Peps, and Curious People,

So I want to apologize for the bit of radio silence that occurred over the past 2 1/2 months.  PC training in Namaacha was a bit more busy than I had intended and my devices to connect with the outside world didn't always work like I had hoped.  Figuring out this internet jist here has been a little tricky in itself too.  But now that I am at my 2 year site and have found this oasis in the desert of Tete that has wifi, I hope to stay more on top of this blog and in touch with you all.

So for a quick recap and update about what had happened in the past two ish months:

Late Sept:
-Arrived in Mozambique and started our stay here in a fancy hotel in Maputo, this was WAY nicer than anything I have experience since than here in Moz.
-Moved to Namaacha and met our Homestay families (Had one Mae and 2 brothers: Pedro and Costa)
    -First night was a real reality check: chicken feet for my first dinner and a bucket bath outside with no  roof.)
 
Oct:
- Training was in full swing
-Language training twice a day every day for two weeks
-Teacher training starts up during week 3 in what were called "Tech Hub" sessions
-We have a Halloween party for all of the homestay siblings and they loved it. (Super-hero, Hunter and a gangster lion.)
-Take our first language test and I am just under the threshold needed for passing
-We go on shadow visits to hang with some current volunteers and see what life is like for PCVs
   -I visit Cambine, Inhambane with a volunteer named Rebecca and we made some BOMB food that was a good break from the non-stop Peixe(fried fish) of my homestay dinners.
   -also started the visit with the weekend in Tofu Beach, which was BEAUTIFUL

Nov:
-After shadow visits we get our site placements, I was placed in Chitima, Tete
   -northwest part of the country and I have a roommate, his name is Drew Cool dude, cooks like a champ.
-I was in the intense language training to try and get me ready for model school.
-Don't quite get to the language level before model school.  But I still teach anyway.
    -we teach a couple classes at the local high school before school gets out
    -I taught 9th grade math, the topic was polyhedrons. I brought in objects from home for examples.  Was a big hit.
-After model school I am still grinding out language class for another two weeks. (Foreign is not my forte)
-For the final language test though I some how pass and am cleared to have enough skill to survive haha
   -although I do feel confident in my language to get around and not worried about living.

Dec:
-Have a homestay party with all the families and enjoy one last night in Namaacha and can dancing at Tinga's
-MOZ-25 swears in! At the Mozambique Ministry of Education headquarters in Maputo.
   -I don't want to brag but.... I think my swear in outfit killed it.  Real Mozambiquen-esq haha
-After swear-in we say good by to all the good friends we've made over training and we jet off to our respected regions of the country.
-After couple days in the central part of the country for supervisors conference, we truck it out to our site.
-Am now here at my site and really enjoying it.
   -and getting used to the crazy heat.

Hope that helps ya'll fill in some of the blanks about what the heck I've been up to for the past 2 1/2 months.

Homestay Fam at homestay celebration

First Lingua Group

There is MY SITE

We are on the board and out in the Bush

Mae Nature knows best.

So yesterday was Thanksgiving and us trainees were lucky enough to leave Namaacha for a few hours and take a mini trip to the capital, Maputo, for a short mental vacation and enjoy some of the US comfort foods we all know and love from Thanksgiving.  Also we were able to enjoy a little A/C, which was very much needed that day, and got to vegg out on a couch that had more than an inch of padding.  

Life was American good for a couple of hours while I stuffed my gut full of turkey, stuffing, fresh greens,  REAL CHEESEy potatoes, and pie.  And the free Heineken beer was a nice added touch too.  Though the oasis of our country director's house could not last for ever and we were ushered out of the place after a few great hours.  

Actually we were hustled out of there real quick, with our PC training staff telling us that we were being late as we are all trying to get one last use of a flushing toilet. So we all hurry and pile into our chappas, taxi buses, that we're going to take us back to Namaacha, which had been in the direct sun that whole time and were still directly in the path of those intense African rays. Which heated that thing up like the charcoal on my mae's stove.  And of course once we all pile into the chappa our driver is no were to be found and we have to wait, typical.  We slowly start baking like the holiday turkey we just ate.  I'm in the back of the chappa and sitting at a seat without a window that opens, bad move on my part.  It's like being an ant underneather a magnifying glass in the sun.  Like a little kid was just antagonizing me seeing how much heat I could take and that kid was simply life itself.  As I sat and stood up to try and air out a little it seemed like everything I did only made me sweat more.  My whole shirt was now a solid shade darker and I was dripping sweat off of every corner of my body, could only compare this amount of stagnet sweating to my few days of cutting weight during freshman year high school wrestling.  Rocking a sauna suit and two pairs of sweats doing push ups at the top of the pool room bleachers.  

Though our driver was finally found and we were on our way, thank the lord, with the chappa moving and every window on that thing wide open I was able to eventually catch some breeze and cool down. After getting through some holiday traffic, which I don't even think I can call it that because they don't celebrate Thanksgiving here, we were back in Namaacha and being dropped back off at the front of my barrio.  Once I stepped off that chappa and started on my trail back to house I felt so stale and coated with a thin layer of dried sweat all over my body.  Needless to say when I got home I wanted my nightly bucket bath in the worst type of way.  As I am drawing up my water in my NEW BATH BUCKET I notice there is a good storm a coming up from our southwest in Swaziland.  A solid thunder cloud with lots of lightning to show.  I don't care, I'm feeling pretty grimey and in serious need of this bath.  

So I start heading out to our roofless bathroom and my Mae stops me on the patio to tell me there is a storm coming and I should skip the bath.  I tell here I'll be fast and I need it, also thinking what are the odds I'll ever get struck by lightning.  I do my thing with the bucket and am hast about it.  The storm is rolling in quick but I'm almost done and the rain isn't even to us yet.  I'm drying off and the thunder is coming quicker and quicker after each lightning strike.  With my towel in hand and getting ready to go for my shorts all of a sudden, Flash, the whole sky is lit up and then the loudest BOOM follows immediately after.  I'm not struck but damn did I hit the deck.  My heart is racing and high tail it outa there.  Snatching my shirt and shorts on the way to runnining to the house as I attempt to wrap my towel around my waist.  I hear my Mae shout, "Man Cole," and she ushers me inside once she sees me rounding the corner like I'm coming around third base heading home to beat the relay throw to the catcher.  I make it in the house and she shuts the door, we go into the kitchen and shut that door too were now my two brothers, Mae, three neighbor kids, and I (still dripping and barely wrapped with my towel) are all huddled up.  After a few moments we calm down and the rain begins to come down in buckets.  My Mae and the children then look around and see me. Then realize what had just happen to me and they all being to burst out laughing and speaking in xingana to eachother about what just occur and trying to quote the explicits they all heard me yelling as I hurdled into the house.  I begin to laugh too as I simply look at my Mae and tell her she told me so and was right. Mae always knows best. 

MozamBustAMove

Out of all the Peace Corps countries I could have been invited to serve in I don't think I could have landed in a better place to fuel Jerome's incessant urge to dance.  Lemme tell ya why.  While majority of the population here have less than most I've know in the past they do love their music and someone's house will often have at least one decent speaker or set.  And everyone loves to dance! I'm talking EVERYone: the kids, boys, girls, the ladies, and the men.  Men here actually like to dance the most I'd say and they are all about getting in the center to show off their moves.  It's an odd day if I don't see a group of kids together taking turns showing their stuff around a cell phone with a beat or a teenager doing his solo thing walking down the street with his headphones in.  Our only channel that we get on our TV also just so happens to be a Mozambiquen version of MTV before it got lame with reality shows and actually showed music.  But the afternoon show is usually a guest show where they bring on aspiring artistic and dance crews and let them get their 15 seconds of fame and show off their goods for a bit.  And this show's set looks as though it is a slightly better funded version of Wayne's world, like a chic

  Heck on a nightly basis in my house my brothers will steal my Mae's phone and dig into her library to put on the latest and greatest one hit wonder that has gone viral throughout the barrios and will just let it all go.  I mean full body moves gettin in to it, stanki-leg, the whip, nea-nea, Michael Jackson classics, and even booty twerking (yes, especially my little brother loves to twerk).  He busted his go to move at our sibling Halloween party in the center of the costume show circle.  A couple nights at home we can't even make it through dinner without one brother stopping to bust a quick move because our Mae's ringtone went off. 

But the fun doesn't stop with the local kids, because the adults have their own awesome dancing go-to's and games they like when the party gets going.  For some insight I'll tell ya that most of the Mozambiquen dancing styles involve a lot of use of the legs, which they take that to a whole knew level.  And it's all about getting your chance to show off your stuff in the spotlight for a brief moment.  Circling up to a good song and taking 30 sec turns leaving it all out there is pretty much the norm.  Nothing really like "you got served" stuff, most people are all pretty good at giving others a chance when they want it and props when they are deserved. 

Though the most entertaining dance finominan and was also one of my first cultural nuances I saw upon arriving to Mozambique is something we have just been calling "can dancing."  And it's pretty much exactly like it sounds.  Once the party is good and going someone will take the liberty of kicking it up a notch by placing a can, or a stack of cans, in the center of the dance floor circle and everyone will take turns really strutting their stuff this time. All while attempting to getting as close as possible to the cans without touching or knocking them over while still maintaining that elevated level of swag to impress the masses.  It's a honestly some of the most fun and definitely most entertaining type of dancing I've experienced.  And like I said this was the one of my first cultural oddities that I witnessed, which was during our first night in Moz at our hotel in Maputo which was hosting the reception to a wedding and the bridesmaids had got the competition going while all of us newly arrived trainees watched in the fun from the patio.  Knew there was at least one thing about Moz I was going to like at that point, and still is a country highlight now.

    Teaching the local school kids the whip-naynay

        Dinner time dancing

Was almost a nightly occurrence.

Can dancing in all its glory