A Mae and A Pai and I'm Shy

Ever since leaving Dallas on September 12th, different stages of this journey have been coming and going super quickly:

• Leave Dallas…Drive to Kansas (8 hours)
• Get to Kansas: Buy things; Pack those things; Family Time; Lucy Time. (9 Days)
• Go to Philly: Staging—a brief synopsis on what to expect and basic Safety/Security (2 Days)
• Fly to Johannesburg…then to Maputo (15 Hours)
• Stay at a Hotel in Maputo (Mozambique’s capital): Vaccinations, Malaria Medication, Training (2 Days)

Each of those tidbits of my journey led me to last Sunday—the day we met our host families and began living in Namaacha alongside hard-working, xima-eating, Portuguese-Speaking Mozambicans. To be honest, the idea of a homestay gave me a lot of anxiety. 

I can maybe if I’m lucky string one sentence of Portuguese together. Am I just going to sit there in silence, smiling like an American chump? 

I don’t eat meat. What if that’s all she has cooked for lunch on Sunday? I show up and say I’m good with just water? Yeah right. 

The bathing situation is the definition of foreign to me. “Bucket Bath” is a faraway idea that is now my only way of getting clean. 

I have the most basic understanding of the culture, but what if I do something inappropriate and/or offensive? Considering how not-censored I am, this one may actually happen. But I really hope it doesn't. 

Most importantly to note, is that this is the first time since I got to Philly where I haven’t been with at least one other volunteer. I wrote about how nice it was to be amongst people with similar anxieties and aspirations, and between 2pm Sunday and 7:30am Monday morning, I would not have that. As we drove to Namaacha from Maputo that day, I was anxious with anticipation…intimidated…to be honest, I was scared. I wanted to be the best volunteer guest ever, but I wouldn’t be able to say a sentence. Yikes!

We arrived at the Teacher Training Center (“IFP”) in Namaacha around 2pm, where all 62 of our families were waiting for us in a big circle on the basketball court. They were singing a song in Portuguese, and even though I had no idea what they were singing about, you could tell they were all bursting with excitement to meet us and bring us back to their homes. Happy tears welled up in the back of my throat. It was a beautiful sight. One member of each family was holding a sign that said a volunteer’s name and the head-of-household’s name. We began looking for our names, held by the people that would take care of us for the next three months. It’s like at the airport when you’re going somewhere new for business and some stranger is standing there with your name on it and you’re like “cool I don’t know you but I’m who you’re looking for!”. It was like that…except way, way better. 

Meu Pai (my dad), Horacio, of minha familiia (my family) met me at the IFP and said that minha Mae (my mother) was at home cooking lunch for us. I was expecting there to be a 15 year old grandson in the house as well but Horacio said it was just him and Cecelia at home. It took me approximately 1 minute to realize that the communication barrier was real. I was able to tell Horacio that I am from Texas, that Texas is big, and that the flight from Dallas to Maputo took about 15 hours. Those simple facts were communicated slowly and with lots of hand gestures over a 20 minute walk. Other volunteers were walking to their new homes with a bunch of children, and I felt jealous of that. For one, the children were freaking adorable and you can’t help but feel happy when you see them. Second of all, it took some of the pressure off of speaking because with little children you can smile at them with adoration and play silly games with them for hours and nobody will think anything of it. I didn’t have that so I continued to engage in brain-frying half-conversation.

Think about that for a second. You are about to live with and depend on two people with whom you cannot communicate. I did not know how to ask where the bathroom was, say when there was enough food served to me, or say I am tired and want to go to bed. The most difficult part was that I wasn’t able to express how grateful I was for their wonderful hospitality that first day. 

Here are some photos of my new home:

When we got to the house Cecelia greeted me with a huge smile and a hug and that made me feel a little better. Horacio was nice and welcoming, but there is something about a mother’s energy that naturally offers comfort. Because it was so late (they usually eat lunch between 12h00 and 13h00 and it was past 14h00), we ate immediately. She made chicken and rice. That’s right people, chicken and rice. No como carne. I don’t eat meat. I told Mae Cecelia that and she said in Portuguese “okay no problem. I made chicken.” Ma’am….that’s meat. But Mozambicans don’t consider chicken or fish meat, so actually, Mae, we do have a problem. 

A Retelling of the Egg Fiasco Beings Right Now.

I tried to explain that it would hurt my belly if I ate meat and she said okay and told me I should cook my own eggs so that she could see how I liked them. Usually I like my eggs over medium so I started with that. She poured some oil in the pan and I crack the egg, fully committing myself to the task of flipping an egg once and keeping the egg in tact. After I committed to the over-easy situation, I motioned for a flipping apparatus (If I can’t say “where’s the bathroom” there’s no way in hell I know the word for “spatula”). She gave me a spoon. A spoon. To flip an egg. Can we please recognize how hard it is to successfully flip an egg with a spatula. It’s hard. I only do it without breaking the yolk like 20% of the time. The rest of the time I default to scrambled and half of the eggs get stuck to the pan and breakfast is as good as worthless. With a spoon instead, the chance of me nailing this one is pretty much nonexistent, but the pressure was on…hard. Mae is watching me very intently, trying to learn how I like my eggs, and I’m about to bust this yolk open like it was 1999.

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BUT SOMEHOW I DID IT. NO BROKEN YOLK. #RAISETHEROOF #IMTHECHAMP #CANTSTOPWONTSTOP and I’m pretty sure she knows how hard it is to cook an over-medium egg without messing it up because with a giant smile she said “ayyy bem!” which means good. I laughed and we high fived and it was our first moment. 

Egg Fiasco Over. Mission Egg: Possible.

After lunch she asked me if I had any dirty laundry and after I said yes she told me to bring them outside so that I could wash my clothes. Homegirl doesn’t waste any time #chores. I hand washed all of my dirty clothes on a washboard made of stone. She showed me how first and then I followed. As I finished washing a piece of clothing she would hang it on the line. 5 pairs of my underwear were hanging on the line, right smack in the front of the house. Good thing they were tastefully adorable and not lacy thongs.

After laundry, she showed me her baby piglets—6 of them and only 14 days old. I got too excited about the pigs and Mae laughed at me. And I laughed too because what else do you do in that situation. I can’t really speak to you, so if you’re happy I’m happy. We also watered the garden and she showed me all the vegetables that she grows (leafy greens, onions, tomatoes) and we stood there in silence for about 30 minutes watering because the bucket took forever to fill up and I literally didn’t know any words to say #Duolingofail. In that moment, I was really glad to know that Mozambicans don’t mind silence. I just stood and enjoyed being there, watering a beautiful garden with a woman who will soon become a second mother. Even if she did laugh at me for falling in love with the piglets. 

After chores Mae told me it was bath time. Yes, I have two bath times each day: one in the morning and one in the night. Both are mandatory. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t get served dinner if I didn’t bathe beforehand. At first I thought that it was going to be a pain to do the bucket bathing twice per day (a pain in the bucket, if you will) but it’s actually quite nice. I have learned to take a complete bath—washing hair, face and body—using only 6 cups of water. If you’re not impressed by that then consider yourself uninvited to my blog party. #bye

Dinner was the same meal as lunch—rice and eggs (and the omnivores ate chicken). After dinner I sat in the living room in silence with them for about thirty minutes while they watched Brazilian soap operas on TV. It felt really good to sit down and turn off my brain (since the show made no sense to me anyhow). I told them I was going to go to bed and they wished me a good sleep. I shut the door to my new room, and under my mosquito net, zonked out the second my head hit the pillow.

In sum, that day/night with my homestay family was not easy. I knew that they were about to put in a lot of extra work in order to support me, accommodate me, try to learn about me, and show me love. I knew that I could barely say “thank you”, let alone express my true gratitude for their willingness to serve as my host family or the next three months. That was tough. They were so happy to see me and to meet me and I felt like I couldn’t give anything back. Not even a snipit of who I was or how I was so excited to be there. I think it would have been really cool to have been able to say, “Yo Mom! We are going to become bestie boos, just you wait!” But I knew in time that would come. 

Patience Sarah. I don’t have much of that currently, and now seems like a pretty darn good time to become a collector of patience. One. Day. At. A. Time.