HOME.

So, this week for the BloggingAbroad.org blog challenge, I was supposed to write about my home. You all have already seen pictures of my house, so I didn’t want to recap that again. Instead, I wanted to use this platform to discuss whether or not my house here, the place where I sleep and I eat and I bathe, has yet become my home.What does the word “home” mean? Is it different than the word “house”? Let’s look at the definitions:

Home: The place where one lives permanently, especially as a member of a family or household.

House: A building for human habitation, especially one that is lived in by a family or small group of people. 

The definitions aren’t very different, but the connotations that accompany each word are. The way we typically use the word house in English is to refer to the physical structure purposed with giving people shelter. Home is the comfort, familiarity and memories that come with living in the same house for a long time. 

There are also two words similar to this in Portuguese:  Casa, house, and lar, home. However, casa and lar are not used in the same way that house and home are used in English. Casa refers to the house of your family, where you grew up, or where a single (unmarried) person currently lives. Lar specifically refers to the house you move into with your spouse after you marry. So a person doesn’t have a lar until they get married, whereas everyone who has nightly shelter has a casa of some kind. Further, your casa as a child is your parents’ lar. Your lar as husband and wife will be your children’s casa until they get married and move into a lar of their own. Do you follow?

So, in Portuguese, the transition between casa and lar is pretty straightforward. It’s my casa until my hubby and I move into our lar together. However, in English, the difference between house and home is based more on feelings and less on timeline/life events. When does a house become a home? In American culture, it is entirely possible for a person to make a house into their home without getting married, right? But if holy matrimony isn’t the thing that helps to know when our house becomes a home, then what is it? 

It is when there are 18 pictures on the fridge, stuck on there with 18 magnets you bought as gifts for other people but never gave to them? Is it when at least 4% of the carpet is spotted with tinges from the crackle of the fireplace? When you finally remember which switch in the bathroom is for the fan and which is for the light 24x in a row? When there are more framed pictures on the walls of your kids/dogs/friends than of actual artwork (or blank space)? When the microwave has gunk splatter that’s just going to be there forever, and you’ve officially given up the scrubbing battle? Or when every single piece of home decor is just the way you want it (for now)?

Yes, I am a math person. I like concrete measurements of progress much more than abstract ones. But, this idea of house to home can’t really be measured in the way that math nerds like to measure. It just becomes a home when it does.

Which leads me to my next question: I’m NINE DAYS away from hitting the “year-in-Moz” mark, and I wonder if my house in Manjacaze has yet become my home. I haven’t gotten married, so it’s for sure a casa and not a lar. But, in English, is it a house or a home?

Is it the place where I sleep and I eat and I bathe, or is the the place where I live live? 

I think, after much time settling in, it has become my home, and here’s why:

• I haven’t locked my keys inside my room since the first month living there.
• My room has pictures of Lucy and family and encouraging hand-written letters from home that I refer to on a daily basis.
• We have a place to put coffee grounds and eggshells to improve the quality of the soil in the garden. When I go to other volunteers’ houses, I feel weird throwing eggshells and coffee grounds away.
• I have a morning routine that is flawless: It allows time for bath water to boil, for coffee to be made and drank, to almost forget something important and have to come back for it, and time to snuggle with Amêndoa.
• Tess and I have our specific chairs we sit at when we eat/study/watch Grey’s. Mine is the one on the far side of the table, facing the door. Hers is the chair on the left side of the table. 
• I have a drinking water routine: I boil water in the morning, put it in a pot to cool during the day, and put it in my water filter at night. It filters overnight so that every morning I am greeted with clean, drinkable water.  
• I have become used to people that work with/for the nuns coming in and out of our yard at all hours. Wether it be to replace part of our reed fence with cement blocks, the orphans feeding the pigs, or Mamá Amélia coming to water the garden, I simply say hi and continue with my day. 

That being said, I think that home in English not only refers to the structure itself, but to the community as well. So, what makes a city a home city? I think even in English, a home city is where your family lives, or where you grew up (or both). For me, it’s the place that makes me reminisce about senior prom; Thursday night volleyball games; lung-burning track practices; my first feels-like-you-got-punched-in-the-gut break-up; Rueben the English Bulldog; my mom and my dad and I all living in one house together even though they had been divorced for 14 years; prohibited basement drinking parties; and Thanksgiving dinners. In that sense, Brecksville/Independence, OH definitely is my home city, and Manjacaze never will be. 

But the comfort level I feel here, in this city even only after 10 months of living here, is pretty amazing. I think it would take just as long to feel comfortable moving to a new city within the United States, so I’d say I’m doing ok considering I’m halfway around the globe and very few people here know anything about American culture besides for Hollywood’s portrayal of it. 

And surprisingly, only after 10 months, there are already things to reminisce about, that bring a smile to my face when I think “remember when…”

• Remember when we didn’t have a house to live in and Alex and I were sharing a super small room, with two twin-sized beds and all of our luggage?
• Remember when the first batch of puppies was here to greet us when we arrived?
• Remember when we took the longest way possible to walk to school because we didn’t know the shortcut…and it was the middle of summer…and that damn road had no shade…and it was awfully hot even at 8am?
• Remember when my shower actually worked? oh…that’s a sad one because now it doesn’t. Bucket baths every day…
• Remember our first Christmas here, with sparklers and puppies and a mini-christmas tree and Jameson and Cards Against Humanity?
• Remember when we didn’t have school for a week because nobody could find the keys to the classrooms?
• Remember when I was semi-afraid of Valiente (our gardner)?
• Remember when Amêndoa caught a chicken but didn’t kill it so we had to wander around the neighborhood trying to find its owner? (We never found the owner). 
• Remember when I thought it was an ok idea to hand wash 30+ pieces of clothing at once? Ha, yeah right. Now 10 is my limit. 
• Remember Project Runway nights? We would watch multiple episodes of Project Runway and eat an entire pan of cake. It. Was. Awesome. 

Puppies Round 1

The anonymous chicken and the convicted murderer.

Puppies and Christmas Tree

Sparklers on Christmas

And finally, I don’t think it would be right to talk about the word home without talking about the most important thing that makes a house a home: Family. I have that here, for sure.

Adozinda (our maid) is part of the Manjababes Residence family. She is always looking for ways to help us keep the house in tip top shape. She washes my socks even when I don’t give them to her. She washes the curtains in the living room without having to be asked. She deep cleans our fridge at least once a month. She brings her 3-year-old son over and I lend her books to help him learn Portuguese. He knows me by name and absolutely loves Amêndoa. He can now count to four. 

Mamá Amélia is the woman that comes over every day to water the garden, and she too is part of the Manjababes Residence family. The nuns use food from the garden to feed themselves, the orphans and the nuns-in-training. She always stops and chats (and chats and chats and chats) if I’m home when she arrives. She always leaves veggies on the table for us.  She helps find and cover holes that Amêndoa makes in the reed fence as an attempt to escape the yard. She once told me that even though I’m pretty, that’s not what matters. What matters more is that my heart is pretty, and she knows that it is. 

Valiente is part of the Manjababes Residence family. He tells me good morning every morning. He got mad when I didn’t know there was a well in our yard until two days ago…and proved that the water was drinkable by drinking it straight out of the bucket. When I make cake I ask him to try it and he always says it’s good, even if it’s burnt. 

Mana Tess, the Health Volunteer that lives here, is also a part of the Manjababes Residence family. She’s the person I nerd out to when I think of a creative way to teach a lesson. She’s the person I bitch to when something annoys me to an irrational extent. She lets me make fun of her poor peanut butter making skills. We practice yoga together every night. She understands how annoying it is to be sexually harassed by Mozambican men every day, and what it feels like to not have the right words in the right language to say what you want to say. When I excitedly showed her my new tattoo 17x in one day, she didn’t roll her eyes. We are to each other a daily reminder that progress here is being made, but that it’s still ok to feel lost sometimes.

Mindo, Adozina's son

Mamá Amélia

So, is my house my home? I think in many ways it is. While Manjacaze will never be my home city, the house where I live is also the house that keeps many of my PC Moz memories, and where my current Manjababe family lives. And on the ridiculous, happy, sad, blissful, frustrating journey that is Peace Corps, I’m so grateful to have a home here.