Where in the World is Jess?

Hello everyone….sorry I disappeared again. As my Peace Corps Service came to an end I suddenly became very busy and forgot to post anything….

The end was pretty emotional with leaving a community that became my home for two years, difficult with trying to pack up my house/organize everything I’d accumulated over 2 years, and hectic with the end of the school year. 

After leaving my community I spent a week in Maputo with some friends to finalize all the Peace Corps paperwork and medical clearances before I ‘got my R’ (for Returned Peace Corps Volunteer) and officially ended my service. 

Now, instead of coming straight home, I’ve decided to travel for a while to take full advantage of being on this side of the world. 

For the first part of my trip I’m traveling with other Peace Corps friend to 7 countries. We started in Moz where we passed through Namaacha, the town where we spent our first 3 months in Mozambique, to say goodbye to our host families there. It was crazy to see how much my little host sisters had grown over the 2 years I was away.

After Namaacha we went to eSwatini (Swazi), where we went hiking and animal watching in a National Park…..and got rather lost….

We then bussed over to South Africa where we spent two nights in Joburg (and 7 hours in the Apartheid museum) before hopping over to Cape Town and going on another hiking adventure…..where we got lost again and ended up taking a more intense, strenuous, scramble-y rout than we intended….but we also decided it was probably a more fun rout. We also had a wonderful Thanksgiving, visiting penguins and the morning and eating a delicious dinner of chamusas (Mozambican samosas), mac and cheese, homemade bread, chicken, salad and apple pie. 

Now we’re getting ready to head over to Namibia where we’re planning on hiking sand dunes, sand boarding, ATVing and hopefully not getting stuck in the sand in our rental car! After Namibia we’ll be bussing through Botswana and spending a few days there to do some game drives and a boat game ‘float’ in the Chobe area. After Botswana we’re headed to Zambia and Zimbabwe to see Victoria Falls (which I’ve been wanting to do since I got to Moz!) and hopefully do some hiking/swimming/rafting there before I head back to Moz. 

I’m then planning on frantically washing all of my clothes and re-packing for part 2 of my trip, where Abdul and I will be spending a few days in Zanzibar and then bussing through Tanzania to get to Uganda. I’ll be spending the holidays in Uganda with my extended family, which I’m really excited about, before heading back to Moz to grab my other suitcase, say my final goodbyes and fly back to the US in January. 

The next month or so is going to be a bit crazy, but I’m excited about all my travels….although I’m sure I’ll be ready to get home and relax when I’m done!

Food From Year 2 (once again….)

Another post about food to make you hungry!

This year I’ve become more adventurous with my food – with both consumption and cooking! I’ve already shared some of the foods I like to cook, so for this post I’ll share some of the foods I’ve started eating here….and was hesitant to eat at first….

~Adventurous Foods~

CHICKEN FEET

Well I have actually eaten all the parts of the chicken ~ head, intestines, stomach, heart, liver, bones ~ but when I first arrived in Namaacha, the chicken feet that people ate are what I noticed the most. Back in training, I felt very adventurous when I chose to eat a chicken foot during a meal with my host family…but times have changed and I now eat chicken feet very frequently. It no longer seems unusual or adventurous like it did at first. Chicken feet have now become a semi-frequent part of my cooking, as they help spruce up dishes like beans or matsão and I can easily buy frozen chicken feet by the kilo in the larger towns close to mine.

 

BEEF

Ok….beef doesn’t sound very adventurous….but it’s the PARTS of the cow I’ve eaten that make me feel adventurous…

Cabeça da Vaca ~ Cow-Head Stew

At the butcher’s shop, you can buy different types of cow meat ~ beef, meat with bones, liver ~ and one of the types you can buy is “Cabeça” or “Cow-Head”.

The classic way to prepare cow-head is to prepare a soup/stew. I’m not a huge fan of Cabeça de Vaca dish, as the head has a lot of fat, not too much flavor, and the textures of the eyes and tongue are not my favorite; however, I did get to help Abdul’s neighbors prepare Cabeça de Vaca one day. Abdul and I were in charge of hacking up the head and cutting the meat into bite-sized pieces to put in the stew. It was pretty fun (and I swear the dish tasted better after helping make it). Unfortunately I didn’t have my phone on me, so you don’t get to see a photo of the food-prep.

Doubrada ~ Cow-Stomach Stew

Stomach is another part of the cow that you can buy here at the butcher’s shop. It’s prepared in a very similar way to Cabeça de Vaca, and sometimes restaurants like to combine the two. Doubrada also isn’t one of my favorite dishes here, but I’ll eat it without complaint as long as I have some good piri piri to go with it!

Coração do Boi ~ Cow Heart

So I seem to be complaining a bit about the beef here because Cabeça de Vaca and Doubrada aren’t my favorite dishes, but Coração do Boi is another story. I LOVE grilled cow heart. The first time I have Cow Heart was at my Senhor Director’s house (my school director’s house). Abdul and I went over to visit him and he insisted that we stay to hang out and grill half of a cow’s heart. I was a bit apprehensive at first, but after trying it, any anxiety was cast aside. It was so good!! It has a similar flavor to beef, but the texture is less tough so it’s more pleasant to eat (in my opinion). I enjoyed it so much that on several occasions I have gone to the butcher’s shop to buy a cow heart to grill at a friend’s house.

You can also make a type of stew with cow heart, which is tasty; however, I definitely enjoy the grilled version the most!

 

SEAFOOD

Once again, for most people seafood isn’t very adventurous, but those of you who knew me well in the States know that I was never one to choose to eat or enjoy fish…but here things have changed! Abdul LOVES fish and so I’ve come to eat more and more fish…….and now I like it to the point where I find myself even WANTING to eat fish.

Fish in General….

I’ve eaten many different types of fish here, prepared in different ways. Where I live it is a bit difficult to find large fish, so we tend to marinate and fry the fish we have…recently it’s become a part of our breakfast to accompany bread and salad. However, when we went to visit Abdul’s sister, we were able to easily find large fish to grill, which was also delicious.

Christmas Lobster

Instead of having a classic Christmas Turkey (turkey here is rather expensive and hard to come buy), my family decided to have a festive lobster for Christmas dinner when they were here in December. I honestly think it was the first lobster I’ve ever had, and Dad did a very good job barbecuing it!

Camarão ~ Shrimp/Prawns (I don’t really know the difference between the two)

Again, last Christmas my family tossed tradition to the wind and instead of having our typical Christmas Eve Ham, we had Christmas Eve Shrimp. They were the biggest shrimp I have ever seen! They were really good in themselves…..and Mum made a delicious white wine, butter and vinegar sauce to accompany them, which made them even better!

My provincial capital has a lot of shrimp/prawns. There’s shrimp/prawns of different sizes, so the smaller ones are a reasonable price, while the large ones (like the huge ones we had at Christmas) are a bit out of my price range for a normal meal. When I visit the provincial capital I like to buy some shrimp/prawns that we can either prepare on their own (delicious!) or add to matsão to make it more fun/unique/tasty.

Mexilhão ~ Muscles/Oysters/Clams (Again not 100% sure which of these it is)

OK a lot of these ‘adventurous’ foods aren’t very adventurous, but I feel like this one is. I bought dried muscles/oysters/clams out of a bucket from a lady on the side of the road when I was taking a chapa to my provincial capital. I saw the dried mexilhão every time I went to Xai Xai, but they never looked very appetizing; however, Abdul said he wanted to try putting them in matsão sometime, so I decided to buy them one day and we prepared them with matsão andddddddd it turns out they are pretty good! They don’t have a super strong flavor, but do add something different to a dish that I make almost every week, so it’s fun to add variety!

Squid

If I’m being completely honest, I’m pretty sure I only had squid once in my life before coming to Mozambique. The only time I can remember having squid is when we were visiting the Yabroffs in Indiana and I accidentally ate fried squid rings thinking they were onion rings….wasn’t my favorite surprise haha.

So….I haven’t been very adventurous with trying squid, but when we were up in Tofo for the weekend Abdul and I bought a kilo of squid that he prepared for breakfast. It isn’t the most breakfast-y food, but it was made with liberal use of lemon and garlic so even I enjoyed it!

Crab

Crab is expensive and difficult to find around where live, but Abdul’s sister lives right by the beach in Inhambane and has no trouble finding crab. So when she came to visit for a weekend she brought some crab with her, which we were able to prepare and it was so good! Once again, crab isn’t something I’d really eaten very much of before (except stealing parts of mum’s crabcakes), but it was really good and I wish it was cheaper and easier to find here!

 

Well, I hope you found some of these foods a bit adventurous and enjoyed reading some more about my eating habits here!

Food from Year 2

Well I was going to make this one post, but I ended up writing a TON (I’m sure you remember how much I like food….) so I’ve split my post up into two.

During my second year here I have grown more and more Mozambican, which reflects in the foods I eat. Last year, I made a lot of ‘American Foods’ instead of Mozambican foods, but times have changed and I now eat Mozambican food ~almost~ everyday.

For the first post…….FOODS I COOK!

~ Favorite Mozambican Dishes to Make ~

CHAMUSAS ~ Mozambican Samosas

Ok. Learning to make chamusas is one of my favorite things I’ve done in Mozambique. Chamusas are the Mozambican version of a samosa and they are SOOOOOO GOOD! Abdul taught me how to make them a few months ago and we now make them almost every week to eat for breakfast. (My breakfast habits have changed a lot to become more Mozambican – I now typically eat breakfast after teaching my morning classes and breakfast usually consists of bread, chamusas and salad….none of which I classified as a breakfast food before living here in Mozambique.)

Chamusas are often sold in barracas or by children carrying buckets of them around the larger towns and they make a great snack! Around where I live they are typically filled with fish, but you can also find some with beef, chicken or vegetable fillings. (I personally enjoy making beef ones the best!)

Typically chamusas are ‘diluted’ with a lot of onion, both to add flavor and reduce the amount of meat you need to put in (to make them cheaper) and are seasoned with caldo, which is a chicken-flavored broth powder that tastes really good, but isn’t the best health-wise.

We prefer to add more creative seasonings to make unique chamusas ~ cumin, turmeric, rosemary, basil from my garden, and, of course, Piri Piri.

It’s fun giving chamusas to our other colleagues for them to try with all the different fillings we use! People always seem to enjoy them, so chamusa production never stops…..we even made a bunch to take to my friend’s leaving party back in July!

XIMA

If you forgot what Xima is (it has been a long time since my first food post, so I’ll forgive you), Xima is a staple of Mozambican meals. It’s made from ground up corn that you cook with water to form a gelatinous substance that becomes more solid upon cooling. Ok….it doesn’t sound very good from my description and I did hate it at first, but I have grown to really love Xima…it also has the added bonus of being REALLY fun to eat with your hands.

I make Xima on a semi-regular basis, to avoid eating rice or bread every day, and have started putting a little bit of butter in when I cook to give it a smoother texture, and a slight buttery flavor. I’m definitely going to miss Xima when I come back to the US.

MATSÃO ~ Pumpkin Leaf Stew

Matsão is another one of my favorite dishes in Mozambique and I make it almost every week. It’s made from pumpkin leaves, which are cooked with onion, tomato, garlic and a bit of water. When I’m lucky enough to have a coconut lying around I love to add coconut milk and peanut flour in to make it especially delicious, although it is still amazing with just the basics!

Once again, I’m really going to miss this dish when I come back to the US…I think I’ll need to plant a pumpkin patch by my house just to harvest the leaves!

FEIJÃO/FEIJOADA ~ Bean Stew

This was one of my staples last year before I learned how to cook other Mozambican dishes….and is still one of my favorites! My beans always turn out a bit differently depending on what I decide to put in ~ cabbage, carrots, meat ~ and what I decide to use as seasoning ~ turmeric, cinnamon sticks, ginger ~, but my beans always turn out well. If you don’t believe me, believe my colleague, Nergio, who came over to fill up a tupperwear with beans after saying “Ya, I’m going to eat Jessica’s beans for dinner. I know they’re always good”.

CARNE ASSADA ~ Grilled Meat

When I’m with my colleagues, they LOVE eating meat, especially when it’s grilled over charcoal. Whether it’s chicken, duck or beef, it’s always really good marinated with garlic and lemon/vinegar. Sometimes we get more adventurous, adding other spices, but even without seasonings it’s amazing.

PIRI PIRI ~ Hot Sauce

Piri Piri is the name for any hot sauce here. There are several types of peppers that people use and many ways to prepare the sauce. There are tons of piri piri plants around where I live, and my market doesn’t sell the peppers, so I’ve started paying students to fill up water bottles with peppers – it’s a win-win!

During my time here I have grown to LOVE piri piri and have several different types of homemade piri piri in my house. One of my colleagues, Tabas, came over, saw them, and exclaimed “Xiii, Professora Jessica, you EAT piri piri.

I like making piri piri with roast garlic, preserved in oil and vinegar to use when I eat stews like feijão and matsão.

Butttt, Abdul makes and AMAZING piri piri with peppers and mini-lemons preserved in lemon juice. It tastes sooo good and I love using this piri piri for salads, fish, and grilled meat.

Abdul also got creative when we had balsamic vinegar and made a piri piri with balsamic vinegar, peppers, and onions. This is another type of piri piri that I really like using for salads.

We also have a piri piri at home that is just the peppers preserved in oil – this one is mainly for seasoning foods and meat as we cook, but isn’t so fun to add on after as there aren’t any flavors other than the pepper.

On occasions, we like to make “Salada de Piri Piri” or ‘Piri Piri Salad’, which is more like Pico de Gallo salsa. It’s also really good, but is harder to keep, so we tend to eat that shortly after making it (hence it not being in the photo).

Often piri piri peppers are small, but sometimes you can find larger ones, which are AMAZING if you stuff them with garlic and then fry them with some onion and cumin…..my mouth is watering just thinking about this.

Again, I’m going to miss piri piri when I come back – I’m hoping to find some peppers that I can use to make some similar piri piri when I return.

 

I’ll post again soon with some more food to (hopefully) make you want to visit Moz!!

VISITORS!

Since my family visited over the holidays I’ve had a few people come visit, which has been very fun!

While I love my community and all the friends I’ve made here, it was nice having people from back home come so I can practice my English and share my experiences here.

 

Michael and Stevie!

Two of my friends from university stopped off in Mozambique for just over a week as they made an ‘around-the-world’ trip.

It was really great seeing people from back in college, noticing how they’ve changed, and having the opportunity to share my life here with them.

It was funny noticing all the things that they found strange ~ chickens wandering around everywhere…sand roads…women carrying things on their head…using dump flush toilets and squat latrines…eating fish with the heads and bones still there ~ as all these things seem very normal to me now and I don’t even think twice about them. It was fun seeing their reactions and thinking back to how I was when I first arrived here.

It was also great showing them my town and hosting them at my house. Abdul (my boyfriend) and I took them to one of our favorite barracas in the evening, where they had fun with the barraca owner (Jossefa) ~ to the point where Michael and Jossefa ended the evening crouching by a piri piri bush, eating the peppers.

In addition to the entertainment of showing them my town and seeing their reactions, we also took a trip to Tofo, a beautiful beach in the province north on mine.

The trip up was rather eventful ~ hitch-hiking with someone from my town to the main highway, taking a ‘crowded’ chapa (van) up to the town of Maxixe before taking a boat across the bay and then taking an actually crowded chapa to Tofo (we all had to stand up inside the chapa for the first part of this leg of the journey!)

When we were there we had fun on the beach, ate classic Mozambican food in the mercado, listened to other travelers talking about where they’d been (this was a bit odd for me as I live here and hadn’t been doing any world traveling to arrive in Tofo), and went scuba diving! The Tofo has some really cool sea life to see, not to mention diving in itself is great! It was especially fun as Michael, Stevie, Abdul and I were all able to go on a last dive together. (The photo is of us after the dive when we returned to the dive-center) Abdul, while a bit nervous at first, had a great time and keeps telling everybody about how he went scuba diving, as well as talking about how he wants to go again!

 

Angelica!

The volunteer I replaced also came back to visit my site. It was fun seeing her again, as she helped me a LOT during my site visit and my first week at site before she left to go back to the US.

While I didn’t know her for very long, I’ve asked her numerous questions and she’s helped me a lot.

It was nice getting to see her again, talking about what she’s been doing since Peace Corps, showing her how my site has changed since she left andddd she brought me coffee, which was AMAZING!

 

I’m doing a bit better with my posting now, and will post again soon!

Science Fairs! (Round 2!)

Oi Pessoal! Sorry about the blog hiatus….both a lot and not very much at all has happened since I last posted. To me, my life here seems very normal and it’s been hard to find inspiration for interesting blog posts, but I’m hoping to do a series of short-ish posts to catch you all up. (Also my English has definitely gone downhill as I don’t use it very much here….so I’m sorry about the poor writing)

But without further ado, the first post………SCIENCE FAIRS!

So far we’ve had our school, district and provincial science fairs, which ran a bit more smoothly than last year.

This year I knew a bit more about what to expect with Mozambican science fairs, so I was better able to help my colleagues execute the school fair and better able to help the students prepare for the district and provincial fairs.

~School Fair~

My colleagues and I revamped the mini-science club at my school and had students working on a variety of experiments: growing sugar crystals, looking at leaves under the microscope (look Francis! The microscopes are being put to good use!!), creating batteries with fruit, testing pH of urine to test for diabetes and gastrite (not 100% sure what the English translation for this is), and more! It was fun seeing the students so involved and excited about science!

We had a school science fair, which had a variety of experiments and demonstrations presented by students from all grades (and many students more coming to see the projects!) The students seemed most fond of the sugar-crystal experiment and were making bets on who would get to eat the candy.

Preparing for the Fair!

Some took the Setting-Up a Bit More Seriously than Others….

 

~District Fair~

We sent 4 students to the district fair two weeks later to present their projects in the nearby district capital. I wasn’t quite as overwhelmed as I was last year, with all the singing and dancing that accompanies the science presentations and HIV/AIDS seminars, but was equally as pleased with the number of people who came and level of enthusiasm that they had. (It puts my science fair experiences in the US to shame….we didn’t have any singing or dancing!). Like last year, I was on the judging panel, but this year they made me President of the Judges and I had to make a little impromptu speech in front of everyone before handing out the prizes. I’m very relieved they didn’t make me do this last year, as I’m not sure my Portuguese was up to scratch back then.

Usually the district fair is dominated by students from the main secondary school in the district capital, which has more resources available than my school; however, this year a student from my school won his cycle at the district fair and went to the Provincial Fair!!!!!! We were all super proud of him and very excited for this opportunity for our school! His was about with using red cabbage as an acid/base indicator to test urine for gastrite and diabetes

Singing the National Anthem to Start the Fair

The Winners who Went to the Provincial Fair!

~Provincial Fair~

This year I’m working with counterparts from the Ministry in Maputo to help plan the National Science Fair, so I only helped out at the provincial fair this year instead of helping to plan it like I did last year (it was much more relaxing for me!). Instead, this year I got to help prepare our student for the fair! We had a few weeks to work on his presentation before the provincial fair yesterday and, although he didn’t win in the province, he had a great time and presented very well.

I was impressed by the projects presented at the provincial fair this year; they were more innovative and less repetitive than the projects last year.

This year we will be sending a boy from I Cycle and a girl from II Cycle to the National Fair, which we expect will occur in September (although it’s still in the planning process). The boy’s innovation was an ‘Electric Ralador’ (a device to shred coconut), which was very fun and creative. The girl’s experiment dealt with extracting ethanol from local alcohols to use as fuel.

Unfortunately I left my phone in my bag during the Provincial Fair, so I don’t have any fun photos….

~National Fair~

The National Science Fair should be happening in the next month or two (still planning the details) in Tete, a province I haven’t yet been too! I’m very excited about the projects my province is sending to the National Fair this year, as the projects have room to develop and the students presented VERY well; I’m sure they’ll make us proud at the National Fair! (Although I’m not very excited about how stressed I know I’ll be at National Fair making sure everything runs smoothly haha)

 

I promise I’ll post again soon….and I actually mean it this time!

 

Férias and Starting the New School Year

Sooooooo, quite some time has passed since Mum, Dad and Jon wrote a blog post for me.

The time has flown by and I’m now a month into my second year of teaching, but I’m going to back-track a little bit.

Férias ~ School Holidays

From mid-December to late-January I was on school holidays.

I had a lovely time with Mum, Dad and Jon here to visit. We had a lovely warm Christmas on Tofo beach in southern Mozambique and then headed up to the north of the country to Ilha de Moçambique, the old Portuguese capital of Mozambique. Of course it was fun traveling and seeing more of Mozambique, but mostly it was wonderful being able to see my family after so long. The last blog post was about this (and Mum’s quality of writing is better), so I won’t linger on their visit.

When Mum, Dad and Jon left, I didn’t have much time to get sad, as I had to quickly pack and head off to Tanzania to climb Mount Kilimanjaro with some friends.

Kilimanjaro was incredible and, amazingly, everyone in my group made it to the top! We spend 5.5 days climbing up and 1.5 days stumbling down. We were walking at an incredibly slow pace, but I would not have wanted to travel any faster and still managed to get really sore! (I felt very incompetent on this trip given that the porters managed to literally jog up the mountain carrying all of our clothes, food, tents etc….and I was struggling up, walking at a snails pace and just carrying my water and layers fiend the day….)

At the beginning of our trip, we didn’t have the best weather and spent all of Day 3 walking through a cloud. Luckily, the weather didn’t dampen our spirits (too much) and the weather improved, allowing our things to dry. This is INCREDIBLY lucky, as I still froze on my way up to the summit, even as I wore all of my (dry) clothes and can’t imagine what I would have done if my clothes were all soaked.

Kili was incredible, with amazing views that (literally) took my breath away…I actually couldn’t walk and talk at the same time because the air was so thin!

I am so thankful for the amazing group I was with on the mountain as well – I wouldn’t have wanted to be suck on a mountain, in a cloud, suffering from altitude sickness with anyone else. (And a special shout out to Momma Burke – my friend’s mum who came with us – who literally RAN down the last part of the mountain as the rest of us stumbled and limped down). Our guides were amazingly and not only got us up the mountain, but also managed to teach us some Swahili (and make fun of us for talking/singing so much!)

I ended férias in Maputo with all of the PCVs from my group at our ‘Midservice Conference’. It was a hectic whirlwind, but was really fun seeing everybody again and having everyone together in the same place for the first time since we swore in as PCVs.

 

Year 2 of Teaching:

I’m starting my second year of teaching (well I’m now a month in, but it still feels like the very beginning). This year, I have the same number of classes, but I’m teaching 9^th and 10^th grade chemistry. This is fun because I am able to teach some of the students the same material that I taught last year (and am definitely teaching it better!), but also am able to teach new information and stay with some of my students from last year. Things have been a bit crazy at the school this year and our schedule has already changed many times; however, I think we are finally on our permanent schedule!

This year, I also agreed to help coach the girls’ soccer team and we started practices last week. This has already turned out to be quite an adventure; our first practice started with 16 girls and ended with 43 girls, and for three days in a row I had students coming to my house (or hunting me down at school) to tell me that they also wanted to train. I now have a list of 61 girls who want to play soccer, so am trying to figure out how exactly to organize them so everyone gets play time, even though we only have one soccer ball. It is going to be quite an adventure, but I’m excited that so many girls are interested and want to play soccer!

Hopefully I’ll have so more news to post about soon! (And I promise I’ll try to post more often!)

Boa Saída! Boa Entrada!

Happy New Year Greetings from the Unified Granger-Jones family!

I am lucky enough to be here again, guest writing a blog, in Southern East Africa.  Mozambique is truly a beautiful country, with lush vegetation, amazing sweeping beaches, glorious mountains (which sadly we glimpsed, but have not had time to explore) and a rich history and culture.  The only drawback is the 34 hours of travel, which surprisingly passed with no mishaps; I did have a queasy moment at Addis Ababa airport, when I spotted our three lonely suitcases – seemingly abandoned on the runway – as we were bussed to our airplane, in a remote part of the airport.  Astonishingly, our suitcases arrived intact.  The only slight concern arouse because we were transporting three heavy microscopes to Jessica’s school and we were twice questioned by customs agents about them, most vigorously by Homeland Security worried about their weapon potential!

Our first stop was to travel to Jessica’s site, and Marcus was thrilled to avoid the police stops (unlike Vicky in May) and we were excited to be reunited over feijão (beans) with Jessica in Xai Xai market.  Xai Xai is a provincial capital four hours’ drive north of the capital city, Maputo, on the Limpopo Delta.  Our most essential purchase in Xai Xai was a fan from the Chinese loja (shop), as our first two days were marked by extreme heat (upwards of 40C).  Cold beer and sitting under a mango tree seem to be the local way of managing the heat and high humidity.   Jessica demonstrated the dangers of this particular inactivity, when she was completely splattered by an overripe mango falling and exploding on a table in front of her.  Jessica’s site is different to how I remember, in that the school was closed to students for summer break, although teachers were on site performing administrative and curricular duties.  The school grounds were empty of the noise and bustle of the students and were replaced by the noise and bustle of teachers celebrating the end of the school year!

We received a warm welcome from Jessica’s colleagues and her host family.  Despite being welcomed many times, I failed to master the complicated Mozambican handshake, though Marcus and Jon seemed to get the hang of it!  A major difference from May, is Jessica’s increased fluency and confidence communicating in Portuguese, essential elements of which seem to be lilting intonation, expressive grunts and wild hand gestures.  Our first night was spent drinking cajual, a fermented cashew fruit wine, with the Senhor Director and other work colleagues, while watching a swarm of bats emerge Scooby Doo-style into the twilight sky.  Her colleagues feasted and fed us well, including a freshly slaughtered duck (I averted my eyes!) barbequed over carvão (charcoal) and delicious mango slices marinated in piri piri, vinegar and salt (yummy!). Jessica’s host family made us extremely welcome once again.  It was nice to meet the father, who is usually away in South Africa working in the platinum mines.  They were excited to meet Marcus and Jon for the first time and Marcus’ hair was a particular hit.  They couldn’t resist ruffling it, much to Marcus’ consternation.  Men’s hair is typically worn closely shaved, so Marcus’ floppy locks were quite the sensation!  We also attended a festa organized by the local church, for orphans and old people (some of whom were transported in a wheelbarrow!), that involved lots of dancing and games too.  Despite the sweltering 40C plus heat and a puce face, I managed to win a lollipop as a reward for my dancing efforts. We also attended Sunday Mass at the local Catholic Church.  Despite not understanding a word, we were enthralled by the fantastic singing, with only a drum accompaniment, and of course the dancing!  We were honored to be presented to the 300 plus congregation and were warmly welcomed.

We celebrated Christmas in an airbnb in Tofo, a beach community five hours drive north of Jessica’s site.  The crashing waves, warm aquamarine water, pristine sandy beach and cooling (but not cold) sea breezes were a wonderful backdrop to our Christmas festivities.  We celebrated an unconventional Christmas dinner with a 3.5k freshly caught lobster, which we were a bit scared of.  Jessica went scuba diving and we all went on an ocean safari; it was exciting (but exhausting!) snorkeling after an eight meter long adolescent male whale shark as it meandered through the water. In the process, I swam into a flotilla of jelly fish, which though not too painful, left some interesting welts!  Tofo is a popular and bustling community serving both local and ex-pat tourists and Jessica and Jon enjoyed barraca life in Tofo, meeting up with some of Jessica’s Peace Corps colleagues.

I am writing on New Year’s Day from the extraordinary Ilha de Moçambique, a 2.5km x .5km island off the coast of Northern Mozambique.  The island was a bustling Arab port, when Vasco da Gama’s 1498 exploration opened the way for the first Portuguese settlement.  Ilha became the capital city of Portuguese East Africa, until the late 19^th century, and the modern day country is named after the island.  Ilha is a melting pot of African, Portuguese, Swahili, French and Goan culture and is designated a UNESCO world heritage site.  The colonial Stone Town is reminiscent of Mediterranean port cities, while the adjacent Makuti Town is a narrow maze of closely packed thatched dwellings.   We discovered that, as fascinating as the history and culture of the place is, Ilha’s main draw at this time of year is that it is  THE place to be in Mozambique for 36 hour New Year’s festa.  Mozambicans, wearing white, flood the island to celebrate New Year in the spacious colonial plazas and on the beach, with lots of music, street food, cars blaring very loud music and fireworks (no safety standards applied!!!).

After 16 months apart, it is wonderful to be all together again as a family!  Our vacation has been filled with lots of raucous games, delicious food, beer and (a few) injuries.  It is hard, on one hand for us to see how established and happy Jessica is here (as I think it will be hard to extricate her back to the US!) but it is satisfying to see how truly at home she feels in Mozambique.   For closing thoughts, I will hand the blog over to Marcus and Jon!

MARCUS: The most wonderful aspect of our trip is obviously being able to hug Jessica again. It has also been interesting to see how she been able to adapt to living without many creature comforts from home and how proficient in Portuguese she has become, since leaving California 16 months ago.  As a parent, it is a bit of an odd feeling being dependent on your child for food, shopping and just day to day survival.   One of the strongest impressions of Mozambique is how friendly the people are and how generous they are despite their relative poverty.  Travelling around the country, you see positive and optimistic people, which is at odds with the statistic that Moz has the 7^th lowest GDP per capita in the world.  Their sense of pride and hospitality – going the extra mile – is something we can all learn from.

JON:           It has been an eventful two and a half weeks in Mozambique. A highlight of the trip was seeing the whale shark, although while swimming to see the shark I got stung by a jellyfish on the face. Another highlight was meeting Jessica’s interesting colleagues and going to the barracas with them. The food here has been tasty (and the best Indian food ever!) and I learnt some new ways of cooking. Seeing Jessica was for sure the best part of the trip.

The End of the First School-Year!

I SURVIVED MY FIRST YEAR TEACHING!!!

 

I can’t actually believe that I’ve finished with my classes – it didn’t really hit me until yesterday when some students were leaving my house and said “Até no proximo ano” (“See you next  year”) instead of “Até amanha” (“See you tomorrow”). While I am excited that it’s the end of the year, as this means school holidays are coming up (i.e. Mum, Dad and Jon are coming to visit!!!!! and I get to go to Tanzania to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro), I will definitely miss my students and am excited to start the next year of teaching.

Some of the students I’ll miss:

I’ve had a bit of a crazy last week of school here, as per usual. I had students coming to my house to ask to see their grades, tons of students asking for extra work to raise their grades (or asking for me to raise their grades and me giving them a bunch of extra work to do), anddddd many end of the year parties!

 

As I promised at the beginning of the year, the turma that won the most points in the competition won a party – unfortunately (or fortunately, as it means I just have some amazing students), two classes tied for first place so I threw two parties for the classes in my house. The parties consisted of a mad dash for cake, fudge, soda and popcorn and then an animated dance circle and students laughing at my ridiculous dancing (although they asked for it!).

9^a 7-One of the Winning Classes

 

9^a 8-The Other Winning Class

We had a lot of fun at these class parties, so much so that some of my students decided that they wanted to throw me a belated birthday party. I thought this would be a small affaire, with cake, maybe soda, and some dancing. Little did I know that it would turn into a full blown festa with the students coming to my house every day for a week to leave different supplies, two days of food and decoration preparation, an insane amount of rice, six chickens, a five tier cake, balloons, and a bunch of colleagues being invited over too (we’d borrowed their chairs, tables, pots, and buckets to help us prepare for the party). It was a lot of fun and made me feel very appreciated, as well as sad that I won’t get to see many of my students again until February.

 

This morning, in the aftermath of my belated birthday party, some of the 10^th grade girls from my Grassroots Soccer program came over to ask if they could have a party at my house today to celebrate the end of the year before taking national exams (10^th and 12^th graders have national exams after the actual school year ends). So now they are preparing for another party at my house, although this is definitely a smaller festa (only two chickens!).

 

I’m looking forward to a quiet weekend to recuperate from all these celebrations and over the next few weeks will head off to school to work on administrative work and such (when I was a student I don’t think I every really realized all the extra work teachers have to do….).

 

Andddddd in a month’s time I will get to welcome Mum, Dad, and Jon to Mozambique!!!!!! I am very excited to show them my life here and see what they make of the heat (it’s starting to get hot again…)

 

I’m sure I’ll make Mum/Dad/Jon write a blog post, so you can look forward to that in December!

Novidades//Updates

Once again, I’m sorry about disappearing!

I often receive messages from Mozambican friends here asking for novidades or news/updates from my life.  (These messages often take the form of much abbreviated words that I am slowly learning to decipher… For example, I’ve learned that “ktl nvx por ai?” means “Que tal? Novidades por ai?” meaning “What’s up? Any news over there?” …It’s definitely been a learning process).

 

On a day to day basis I don’t often have any news – things here feel very comfortable and normal; however, since last time I posted, I have a lot of updates….

 

Visas

After another trip to South Africa to renew short stay visas, our applications for year-long work visas have been approved! This is very exciting and was a point of worry for a while….

 

Ferias//School Holidays

In August we had a two week break for school holidays. I spent most of this break in Maputo working on organizing and executing the National Science Fair. It turned out to be a huge success; the students had a great time presenting their projects…and perhaps had an even better time at the festinha (small party) that we had at the end of the science fair. It was fun seeing so many students enthusiastic and excited about science! For the last part of the school holidays I met up with a group of friends for the Quissico Timbilas Festival. Timbilas are a type of instrument and the event was basically a huge street party with an amphitheater at one end of the street where they were playing the timbilas. We spent most of our time dancing (I danced a lot in the states, but that was nothing compared to how much I dance here) and apparently we were memorable enough that everyone the next day kept saying “What? You’re not dancing today?”. It was a ton of fun and I hope I can make it to the festival next year as well! Quissico also has the added attraction of a hike down to the lagoon or ocean. We only made it to the lagoon, but the lagoon is home to the infamous ‘Stick Bridge’ that takes us volunteers a long time to cross, primarily on hands and knees, but that Mozambican mães (women) stride across without a care in the world as they also have a baby strapped to their back and are balancing a huge load on their heads….I actually don’t understand how…. We also were lucky enough to see a ‘cow crossing’ while down at the lagoon…which means that we saw cows swimming while the herder walked casually across the bridge.

Attempting to cross the stick bridge…

 

School

We’re coming to the end of the third trimester and I can’t actually believe that I’ve almost been teaching for an entire school year. While sometimes it feels as though the time here is passing very slowly, overall the time has flown by! That feeling of time rushing by is particularly intense this trimester; I missed the first three weeks of the trimester due to a week-long conference and our South Africa Visa trip and every week since then has had a holiday (or two as with this week!)…it’s been a bit crazy trying to coordinate all my classes and teach my lessons.

 

Other Projects

Science Club/Fair: *Refer back to previous post* I’m still doing science club at my school (although it has been a bit sporadic with the craziness of this trimester) and have been writing up more experiments to supplement the current science fair curriculum. With science fair, the other national coordinator and I have already begun planning our process for this year and we are in the process of selecting the provincial science fair coordinators for next year.

Grassroots Soccer (GRS): The aforementioned week-long conference was for the Grassroots Soccer program.  Grassroots Soccer is a program that combines the allure of playing soccer with informational lessons about various topics, such as malaria, HIV, and girls’ empowerment. I attended the training conference with a PE teacher from my school, and since then she has been so motivated in starting the program. We currently have a group of girls that meets three times a week to talk about gender equality, healthy relationships, HIV and other topics relevant to girls’ empowerment. Due to my loud voice sometimes passersby ask about what we are doing and we were even joined by a group of eighth grade girls who have now expressed interest in doing the program and want to learn more about the topics we were discussing. I am very encouraged and excited by how the program has been received in my community and how many people have expressed interest in it.

English Theater: English Theater is a competition between students of different schools. Each group can have up to 10 students who write and perform a play in English based on the year’s theme. This year the theme is “Violence is Never the Answer” so my group wrote a play about violence in schools, which they will perform this Sunday! I’m very excited for them, and am very impressed with their performance!

Early Grade Reading Activities (EGRA): I have begun to collaborate with one of the primary school teachers to start meetings with primary school students to help them with reading and Portuguese. Our activities range from alphabet activities to word recognition to reading stories out loud and asking comprehension questions about the stories. This project is still very new for me, but I’m excited to continue with it and see where it leads.

Sports: My GRS counterpart is also the basketball coach at my school and she has adopted me as her assistant coach/timekeeper/scorekeeper so I’ve spent several Saturday mornings traveling to different high schools in the area to watch the basketball games. It’s been really fun, particularly because my host sister is on the girls’ basketball team! Also, a few weeks ago there was a ‘Sports Festival’ at one of the nearby high schools; it was basically a sports day featuring a soccer tournament, basketball tournament, volleyball tournament, handball tournament, and chess tournament. It was a bit crazy and hectic, but also fun and reminded me of my own soccer tournaments back in the day. I also loved seeing how many of my students played on the sports teams! (I especially enjoyed seeing how many of my students were on the girls’ soccer team because it reminded me of myself!)

 

 

Animals in my House

I know some of you are concerned about the camel spiders…and yes I have had them in my house, but they are very low down on my list of “Animals in my House that I am Worried About”.

When I returned from the South Africa trip I came home to find that a family of rats had moved in behind my oven. I managed to kill some of them with the help of rat traps loaned from my friend who happened to have a rat infestation in her kitchen; however, I still don’t know if I’ve managed to get them all, or if they’ve just moved to a different location in my house. Even so, luckily they don’t seem to have chewed any wires or eaten any of my food….they just seem to enjoy chewing on the top of plastic bottles….

Andddddd, the more concerning thing I found when I got back from my travels was a snakeskin in my bathroom…..so there had obviously been a snake that managed to enter my house (not sure how) and stayed long enough to need to shed its skin in my bathroom cupboard… Also this was no tiny garden snake. It was no crazy 6 foot black mamba or anything, but the skin was from a snake that was 3-4 feet long, so I was a little freaked out, particularly because I did not know if the snake had managed to leave through the same magical door it entered or if it was still lurking in one of the many corners of my house. I frantically messaged one of my friends (who has had to kill several snakes here) for tips on how to find/kill a snake. Fortunately I never did come face to face with the snake, as I’m not 100% sure I would have known what to do, and enough time has passed that I’m almost positive it is not lurking in some corner of my house.

 

Other Fun Things

This trimester has had a LOT of holidays (literally at least one every week since I’ve been back from South Africa), so I’ve had a lot of days off.

One some of these days, I’ve gone to the beach (Praia do Xai Xai is only about an hour away), which has been really fun. I particularly love Xai Xai beach, not only because it is close, but because it is full of Mozambicans and not just South African tourists. I was at Xai Xai beach one day celebrating my friend’s birthday; it was both a holiday and a really nice warm day, so the beach was so full of Mozambicans playing beach soccer, jumping into the waves, drinking, etc. and I ended up running into some people from my site there which was really fun!

On one of the holidays my school held an event resembling a talent show, which was pretty fun to watch, although I now know how all the teachers and parents felt when they came to watch me in my talent shows….

Today is Teacher’s Day, so we don’t have school. We had a ceremony this morning and were planning on having a sports day with a giant party in the evening, but unfortunately one of my colleagues lost a family member earlier in the week, so the party has been postponed until she will be able to make it. I have really grown to love my colleagues; there really is a family atmosphere and they always want to include everyone. I also have some really fun colleagues, who are a little crazy, so the party should be fun.

Cake for her birthday!

The beach starting to get crowded…

 

 

I hope these novidades are sufficient to quench your longing for news from me until I remember to post again…….

 

End of the Second Trimester!

Another trimester has flown by! I’m now 1/3 of the way through my time teaching in Mozambique.

I’ve had another somewhat crazy end to this trimester with students running after me as I’m walking back to my house to turn in makeup work or to ask for their grades. My students have done better this trimester, despite the terrible provincial exam that only included things that we’d learned in the first two weeks of the trimester and ignored everything past that point…

One of my happiest moments at the end of this trimester was when a colleague came up to me and asked what grade her daughter had earned in my class. Her daughter had failed the first trimester, but her grade improved by 4 points (20%!) this trimester and she received a strong passing grade. My colleague was then telling me about how much her daughter had been studying chemistry this trimester and working really hard, which was very encouraging and good to hear. I hope to continue improving my teaching next trimester, and also hope that my students continue to study and work hard!

Now that the trimester has come to a close, we have a 2 week holiday. I am preparing to head off to Maputo to work on the National Science Fair, after celebrating my host-parents’ anniversary this weekend at a massive festa!

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Andddddd, just like last trimester, the Ganhadores!

Throughout the year, my turmas (groups of students) have been competing against each other; they win a point after they’ve had a good aula (class lesson), where they’ve been participating and paying attention. This trimester we had one winning turma…………………9a 8!

This turma did not win the points competition last trimester, but were very motivated this trimester, and managed to pull ahead of the winners from last trimester. They were always paying attention, participating, and celebrating when they won a point after a class. They also were able to meet my mum when she visited!