So, the other day I walked out of my room at my home stay family's house and saw my little sister pants down peeing in a bucket in the middle of the house. I thought nothing of it and went on my way. It occured to me later that my shock value for things is slowly decreasing, so I decided to put some things down in writing that at one point were a little strange to me, but now it's becoming routine and ordinary. For example; going to the bathroom outside in a whole in the ground, using the same soap to wash the dishes, floor, clothes and body, second hand shirts that people wear here that are sent over from the states like the one that my friends 9 year old host brother always wears that says, "this bitch bites", being proposed to daily, riding in a chapa which can only be described as a 'Little Miss Sunshine' van that is falling apart at the seems and usually needs a good push start to get going, and the capacity is 15 people but somehow they shove 20-25 people (and sometimes chickens) in their at once for quite the luxurious ride, the over use of cooking oil, eating everything with your hands, and oh so much more.
I'm having a really good time at training, but it's not really a good depiction of how my life is going to be for the next two years. There are 40 of us Americans in this town so there is always people around to hang out with. We find out our site placements on Wednesday, and I´m getting really excited. This country is absolutly beautiful so I think I'll be really happy wherever I go. It is sort of bitter sweet though because I've made a lot of close friends here with the other volunteers and we are all splitting up come December. It's amazing how fast friendships are made when we're all in unfamiliar territory and we're all going through the same things. It's a really good group and everyone is young and fun and just all around good people. Everyone brings something different to the table. For example, I have this one friend who is the total opposite of me and extremly anal retentive. He's always overly cautious about germs and hygiene. So it was quite ironic when he came down with a bad case of scabies. He was the butt of all jokes for quite a while. It was the best when Moçambican men would come up to him and try to shake his hand like they often do. He would have to explain to everyone in broken Portugues that he has scabies and he couldn't touch them because he's contagious. I think they think that he just some strange white dude now... it still makes me laugh till I cry to think of it.
So Thanksgiving is coming up on Thursday and its the first time I'm away from home on my favoirite holiday, so it might be a rough one. All the trainees are getting together and making a big Thanksgiving meal, or something like that because we kind of have a lack of resources. I hope you all have a great Thanksgiving though and eat lots of turkey and stuffing and think of me!
All my love xoxo
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Saturday, November 3, 2007
what a month
I'm living in Moçambique! Sometimes it hits me like a ton of bricks that I'm actually here and this is my life-it's a surreal and unexplainably cool feeling. I double-take here a lot . Partially because I am actually seeing and doing things that for so long were just images I saw on television or in newspapers. It's the little things like seeing women carry gallons of water or fruit on their heads, or every time I take a 'shower', which now consists of a bucket of water and a cup, or when I help my host mother cook dinner outside with pots and pans over hot coal.
It's been one of the most adventurous and ridiculous months of my life, I must say. Before we arrived at our home stay families house, a previous volunteer told us that in this country, if you feel like your doing things that are just absolutly ridiculous, your probably doing it right. I have lived by those words, and oh man, she could have not been more right. Things happen and I just have to pause, think over what just took place, and then die of laughter inside. But this country is truly an amazing one, and everyone always tells us that we hit the Peace Corps jackpot because everone is so extremly nice and its just a clean slate because it's so undeveloped. They also say if you can do Peace Corps here, you can do it anywhere, so that kind of makes me feel like a bad ass. Haha!
The first time I did laundry here was quite a humbling experiance. My mom got out the buckets of water and I grabbed all my clothes. Then she asked me, in the States , who does my laundry. I told her I did. She said, no no no, who does your laundry? I told her again, I did. We did this back and forth a few times because I thought that she thought my parents or a maid did my laundry. She finally said, a MACHINE does your laundry! At that moment, I wish I knew the word for 'touche' in Portuguese, because ... damn. Now whenever we are doing something like cooking, doing dishes, or any given chore; they always ask me if we have machines for doing that in the States. I thought it was funny at first because I was thinking, wow, they think that we have machines for everything, huh. But then I realized every time they asked me that, I said yes, because my god we do!
There's a few things here that have taken me a while to get used to, but I already feel like I've changed. The biggest one is the fact that I am so squimish and the only way you eat meat here is if you kill the animals yourself. I don't know how many chickens I have seen be brutally murdered here .... oh my how sad. First of all, the knives here are about as dull as a butter knife, and second of all they have no mercy when they kill the thing. So not to get graphic, but they just hold the thing down and saw away at the poor little squacking bird with a dull piece of metal. I cried the first time, clearly, but now I'm so used to it, it doesn't bother me as much anymore. I actually plucked the feathers off of a chicken after and I was quite proud of myself. The other day, though, I came home from training and a bunch of my brothers and cousins had just killed a pig. I felt like I was in a scene from 'Lord of the Flies'. They were all running around with their shirts off and blodd was just everywhere. Not gonna lie, I had to hold back my tears and and my vomit at the same time, which isn't easy.
I'll think of good stories for the next post because there are some good ones. Here's one story, just so you can get the feel of it. My sister who is about 22 has a baby, and when I say baby, I mean a two year old that walks and talks. He still breast feeds, which is interesting in itself, but the other day a bunch of women were sitting around at my house. The baby got confused and thought my aunt was his mom, so he went and pulled down her shirt to breast feed. They all laughed because he was confused, but to my surprise, she let him give it a go anyway. Then the baby's mom pulled out her boob, so he went running to her. All of a sudden, all the women whipped out their boobs and the baby was running around from boob to boob. Awkward Nia just sat in my chair, face bright red, and just dumb struck and awkward. I guess you could say it was culture shock. But now I'm so used to seeing boobs all the time. It's funny because you absolutly cannot show your knees here because if you do, you are a permiscuous girl, but boobs are like elbows here. Last night, I knocked on my door to get in the house, and my mom answered the door with no shirt on. A month ago it would have phased me, but now I guess I would have been shocked if she answered the door with a shirt on.
stay posted! miss you all! xoxo
It's been one of the most adventurous and ridiculous months of my life, I must say. Before we arrived at our home stay families house, a previous volunteer told us that in this country, if you feel like your doing things that are just absolutly ridiculous, your probably doing it right. I have lived by those words, and oh man, she could have not been more right. Things happen and I just have to pause, think over what just took place, and then die of laughter inside. But this country is truly an amazing one, and everyone always tells us that we hit the Peace Corps jackpot because everone is so extremly nice and its just a clean slate because it's so undeveloped. They also say if you can do Peace Corps here, you can do it anywhere, so that kind of makes me feel like a bad ass. Haha!
The first time I did laundry here was quite a humbling experiance. My mom got out the buckets of water and I grabbed all my clothes. Then she asked me, in the States , who does my laundry. I told her I did. She said, no no no, who does your laundry? I told her again, I did. We did this back and forth a few times because I thought that she thought my parents or a maid did my laundry. She finally said, a MACHINE does your laundry! At that moment, I wish I knew the word for 'touche' in Portuguese, because ... damn. Now whenever we are doing something like cooking, doing dishes, or any given chore; they always ask me if we have machines for doing that in the States. I thought it was funny at first because I was thinking, wow, they think that we have machines for everything, huh. But then I realized every time they asked me that, I said yes, because my god we do!
There's a few things here that have taken me a while to get used to, but I already feel like I've changed. The biggest one is the fact that I am so squimish and the only way you eat meat here is if you kill the animals yourself. I don't know how many chickens I have seen be brutally murdered here .... oh my how sad. First of all, the knives here are about as dull as a butter knife, and second of all they have no mercy when they kill the thing. So not to get graphic, but they just hold the thing down and saw away at the poor little squacking bird with a dull piece of metal. I cried the first time, clearly, but now I'm so used to it, it doesn't bother me as much anymore. I actually plucked the feathers off of a chicken after and I was quite proud of myself. The other day, though, I came home from training and a bunch of my brothers and cousins had just killed a pig. I felt like I was in a scene from 'Lord of the Flies'. They were all running around with their shirts off and blodd was just everywhere. Not gonna lie, I had to hold back my tears and and my vomit at the same time, which isn't easy.
I'll think of good stories for the next post because there are some good ones. Here's one story, just so you can get the feel of it. My sister who is about 22 has a baby, and when I say baby, I mean a two year old that walks and talks. He still breast feeds, which is interesting in itself, but the other day a bunch of women were sitting around at my house. The baby got confused and thought my aunt was his mom, so he went and pulled down her shirt to breast feed. They all laughed because he was confused, but to my surprise, she let him give it a go anyway. Then the baby's mom pulled out her boob, so he went running to her. All of a sudden, all the women whipped out their boobs and the baby was running around from boob to boob. Awkward Nia just sat in my chair, face bright red, and just dumb struck and awkward. I guess you could say it was culture shock. But now I'm so used to seeing boobs all the time. It's funny because you absolutly cannot show your knees here because if you do, you are a permiscuous girl, but boobs are like elbows here. Last night, I knocked on my door to get in the house, and my mom answered the door with no shirt on. A month ago it would have phased me, but now I guess I would have been shocked if she answered the door with a shirt on.
stay posted! miss you all! xoxo
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