Ok, so I don’t feel like I’ve been doing that great of a job really talking about what life is like here. To improve on this, I think I’m going to start with a few topics that have been very important in my life lately: Food and Chapas.

FOOD:
So much better since leaving our host families! Becky and I do most of our shopping in our local market, where there are a bunch of stands where people are selling what they grow in their machambas. Most people here have a field where they grow a few things. At the market, you have your basics- there’s always tomatoes, onions, rice, cassava leaves, beans, oil and bread. Depending on what’s in season, there’s also fruit. Mango season is on its way out (SO SAD), but there have been more pineapples lately, and I’m told nectarines are coming. And there’s always bananas. So good. So if we want any variety of vegetables or spices or anything, we go to Maxixe, which is about a 10 minute chapa ride away. They have a huge outdoor market where you can buy pepper, cucumber, sometimes lettuce, cabbage, oranges, papaya, and lots of other stuff. We also planted a little machamba in our yard. The cucumber, zucchini, green beans, and cantaloupe have all sprouted. If my zucchini grows, I am going to buy an oven purely for the purpose of baking chocolate zucchini bread!

Becky and I have been having so much fun cooking. We were given this great cookbook entitled ‘You Can Make It in Mozambique!’ We made a lot of really good stuff lately. Highlights include: spicy curry cabbage over rice, homemade tortillas with spicy beans and rice, and split pea veggie mush with cous cous (a rare find in the South African store!) Everything is spicy, because they have this amazing piri-piri pepper that we use in all of our cooking. Can be dangerously spicy, you have to be careful how much you add.

We went to go visit friends in Inhassoro last weekend, and it was the best food weekend ever. Sara had found dried seaweed, so we made sushi (which inspired me to buy some seaweed, which cost the equivalent of what I’m supposed to spend on food for 4 days). We also made fruit crepes, quesadillas (cheese is so hard to come by here!), and sweet potato gnoki with tomato mango sauce. Ha, oh yeah, and one night when we went to the beach for dinner, I had my first seafood with the head on where I wasn’t grossed out at all! It was a huge ‘pedro’ fish and some fried squid that was really good! I think that’s about it on food. Really good and we have too much time on our hands to cook since school hasn’t started yet. I’m sure it’ll be rice and beans every night when things pick up!

CHAPAS:

Oooooh, public transportation in Mozambique. Always an experience. So I am just going to describe yesterdays chapa adventure coming back from Inhasorro. Just for reference, the trip there took 6 hours, and was relatively uneventful. We are at the chapa stop at 8 am, ready to leave. Chapas are the main form of public transportation here; they look like really large vans. There are 4 rows of ‘seats’ plus the front. They fit 4 people in each row where 3 would comfortably fit. The whole chapa could comfortably fit 18 people, but chapa drivers don’t like to leave unless there’s at least like 23 people shoved in there. So we’re at the chapa stop. And there’s maybe 10 people waiting around, so it’s obvious we’re not leaving for a while until more people show up. About an hour later, there are about 18 people, so we start to load up in the first chapa. I manage to get one of the prized front row seats, where your knees are not like squished up against your chest, so I’m feeling pretty good about this chapa ride. Then we all wait in the chapa for another 30 mins, while they try to cram more people in. And it’s like 100 degrees out. After the seats are filled, then people start standing, hunched over, wherever there’s a little space. So then the driver starts the chapa, and it won’t start. There’s a lot of smoke and it sounds like the engine might start, but not quite. No one seems concerned. The driver yells for some guys to help push. So 3 guys are pushing, we get out on the road, and then it starts (woo!). We’re putting along for a couple hundred feet, and it dies again. At this point, I’m like this chapa is not going to make it to our transfer spot. So Becky and I get off, despite the motorist insisting that nothing is wrong. We go back to the stop, get in another chapa, with a more unfortunate seat, and an hour later, we are on the road again! About 30 mins into the trip, we pass our first chapa, which is still on the side of the road, and most of the passengers on that chapa pile into this one. I’m sitting next to a guy who’s wearing a trucker hat that says “Sex is a misdemeanor. Da more I miss, de meaner I get.” He was a really nice guy! So this chapa was functioning a lot better, but stopped like every 5 mins to let people off, or pick more people up, or sometimes the driver just wanted to talk to some friends along the side of the road. We made it to our transfer, waited for a new chapa to take us home for another 2 hours, and then were on the road again. We made so many unnecessary stops! Any time anyone needs to pee, they make the announcement, and we have to pull over, while they go in the bush. I am terrified of the moment I have to ‘fazer xi-xi’ while on a chapa. It’s way easier for guys to do that, plus if the white girl needed to go pee, I’m sure everyone would be watching and talking about it. I’m sure in 2 years, it’ll happen. On the second leg of the trip, I was seated next to a couple chickens and like 3 babies that kept getting passed around, depending where there was a tiny bit of space. We got home finally at 7 pm, almost 11 hours later. So that’s that chapa trip. Every time, different adventure. I have a friend who swears she was bitten on her heal by a goat that was shoved under a seat.

I found a place with real coffee and wireless internet! Kind of crazy! I'm doing great at my site, but it's been raining a lot lately. Usually when it rains it rains hard all day, so it makes it difficult to do stuff. We did make a garden the other day and attempted to plant a bunch of vegetables. After we finished, the neighbor boy came by and was telling us we did it all wrong, and proceeded to rake through the garden and put leaves on top. I don't know anything about gardening, could be right. We'll see! I planted some flowers around the house too. I hope stuff grows! Otherwise I've just been reading a lot. I read "Water for Elephants," which was really good, on the Elizabeth White (Is it a 5 star system?), I'd give it a 4 stars. Then I just finished "When a Crocodile Eats the Sun," which was a sort of depressing memoir of Zimbabwe, which gets 3 stars. I have my new address! Send stuff to:
Irma Stephanie Goettl
C.P. 31
Maxixe
Inhmambane
Mozambique

If you write me a letter, I promise you'll get one back! Hope everyone had a great New Year! Oh yeah! We went to two New Years parties and oh man, Mozambicans love to dance! And really enthusiastically. I think we're going to be known as the white girls who don't like to dance. I tried at one party to dance, and this guy says in English, "Oooh, you dance so well!" (lies) "It pleases me so much that you try to dance!" It was hilarious. You will all be so impressed with my dance skills when I get back.

Blog 12/21
Happy first day of winter everyone! It’s another 100 degree day here in Mozambique. I’m trying to imagine what it’d be like to be cold right now, and I just can’t picture it. I’m dripping sweat all the time here, so gross.
So Becky and I moved into our new house! It is great! I’ll try to describe it. So you walk into the main living room area, it’s a pretty good sized room. When we got here, there was a dining room table and 4 chairs and a gas tank and a stove. And two boxes of science fiction books, generously gifted by a previous volunteer, so I’m pretty much set on reading material for the next few years. Then on both sides of the living room are doors to bed rooms. There were already beds and mattresses when we got here, which was awesome. In my room I’ve crafted a nail and rope clothesline/closet and turned my moving boxes into bedside tables covered with some beautiful capulanas. Maybe someday when I’m feeling especially handy I’ll try to make some bookshelves or something. So then outside of the house, there’s a little reed hut thing that will eventually be our kitchen once we get a table made for it. A little ways away from the house is a cement casa de banho with (get this) a working shower and flushing toilet! So that’s our house! I love it. We’ve been making lots of trips into town to buy stuff the last few days, but I think we’re pretty set now.
We visited the school a few times this week and met some of the other teachers. They all seem pretty nice. It’s exhausting trying to not screw up the Portuguese too bad and always speak really formally when I’m meeting new people. Becky and I were introduced to everyone at a teacher’s meeting, and the only question someone asked was if we were single. Awkward. So I made the announcement: “Ja temos homens” and everyone started hooting and hollering. Ha, should be a fun group to work with! We’re headed to Tofo beach for Christmas with a couple other volunteers. Merry Christmas!!!

I’m officially a volunteer! And not a moment too soon; I’m so ready to be done with training. We had a ceremony thing at the ambassador’s house in Maputo this week where there were lots of speeches about the importance of community integration and cross cultural interactions, yada yada… Then we ate some delicious appetizers and went along our way to more important sessions about demining and cyclones.

It’s my last day in Namaacha and very bittersweet. It’s really hard to say goodbye to people that I won’t see for another year or so. The last few days have been really fun and I’ve spent a lot of time with my family. I gave them some presents today, and I have to say, I think the snap bracelets were the biggest hit. I also gave them a collage of pictures. Scrapbooking people would be horrified, it was constructed out of flip chart paper and duct tape. So now I will forever be prominently featured in my homestay family’s house.
We’re driving to our site tomorrow with a few of the other people going to the Inhanbane province. I’m not quite sure what to expect, but I think we’ll have to go out and buy a lot of the stuff for our house the first couple days. I know there are bed frames, a table, and a couple chairs. So we have a little furnishing and decorating to do! We will be at site for about a week and then we’re heading to the beach for Christmas with a few friends.

I hope everyone’s holiday season is going well and is not too stressful! Erin sent me a text saying she was drinking a peppermint mocha the other day. That made me really miss Christmas! It really doesn’t feel like Christmas here because it’s like 100 degrees out every day, I have yet to see a Christmas commercial on TV, and I have not heard any Christmas music. I’m sure Delilah is taking some amazing and heartwarming holiday requests this year! On the plus side, this is definitely the least stressful Christmas I’ve ever had! We’re doing a secret santa within my province and that’s the only gift I’m buying! Kind of a nice change. I expect lots of phone calls around Christmas!! Let me know if you need my number!

It´s been a while since I´ve writen. It has been super busy here the past few weeks! We´ve started model school, which is where we practice teaching full 45 minute lessons to a classroom full of students. It´s definitely been an interesting learning experience! The first day I was so nervous and self conscious about my portuguese that I pretty much just read off of my lesson plan, word for word. Since the first day, I´ve gotten much more comfortable. The students that show up to model school in my class are really well behaved and excited about organic chemistry (imagine that!). It seems really bizzare though to be teaching regras de Markovnikov to 16 year olds. It will be much different teaching to a class of 60 when most of the students don´t want to be there, but this has been good practice.

We had site announcements and a fake Thanksgiving last week! I could not be more excited about my placement. I will be moving to a small village just outside of Inhanbane. It´s about a 6 hour drive north of where I am now and right on the coast. I´ll be living with a bio teacher from my training group, and I think we´ll get along really well! We´ve been told our house has electricity and a water faucet outside, so pretty fancy for Africa! I´m pretty sure this is the only time in my live I´ll be living within a 15 min walk of a beach, so I am so excited! I´ll be teaching chemistry in a secondary school, but I´m not sure yet which grade. I can´t wait to get to site and meet neighbors and teachers and everything! If anyone needs a tropical beach vacation, please come visit! The Professionals go to Mozambique? Kurt, will you please get on that?

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! I was definitely missing family and friends. 1 week left of training! I will post my new address when I get it in a week or two. Thanks everyone for the mail! Sorry, I just realized that there are like 20 exclamation points in this post. Excessive.

I went to visit another volunteer at his site last weekend and it was a great break from Namaacha. I went to Gaza province, about 4 hours NE of where I am now. I got to experience a real chapa ride. On the way there, we had 24 people in a van! It was crazy. We went to the beach in Xai Xai 2 days during the visit. It was aaamazing. There was hardley anyone there and the water was so beautiful. I´ll find out where my final site is in a couple weeks, but I have my fingers crossed for somewhere close to a beach. I´m not really into the ´roughing it´. During site visit, we made really good food. It made me hopeful that I won´t be eating rice with a mixture of meat and coconut and peanuts on top which is what I eat most days during training. Its my host sister´s birthday tomorrow. She´s turning 5 and we´re having a big party! Ahaha! it worked. My first picture. There´s me in Africa.

It´s weird not being in the states for the election results. I watched coverage of it yesterday morning, but I was with my host family, and they didn´t really get why I was so excited. But I did have quite a few Mocambicans ask me what I thought about the elections, so that was fun to talk about.

Training is going alright. We just had a midtraining language test and I scored where I need to be at the end of training...meaning I can speak like a 6 year old! Woo! We´ve had a major overload on group projects and creative skits in all our sessions. I hate that stuff. I just want to be lectured to!

My language class made an ´American Meal´ this week. We did it at my house, which was good, since my family had been doubting my cooking skills. It was nice to cook stuff the way I know how to do it. We ended up making more of an Italian meal, with spaghetti and a tomato sauce, garlic bread, and a salad, with pancakes for a snack. My sister was trying to micromanage my veggie slicing for the salad, telling me my tomato slices were too big. And I was finally able to be like ´Its an American salad! We like big pieces of tomatoes, back off!´ Ha. In the end, I think everyone enjoyed the mean. And now they can´t tell me I don´t know how to cook :)

We have site visits this weekend for 5 days! Im really excited to be somewhere else for a few days!