Natal-ification

I never thought that I would say this… but I kind of miss snow!  Ok not really but it does not seem like Christmas time when it is 100 degrees out and rainy and not -10 and snowy.  So I’m not sure I really miss snow or if it is just that I love Christmas time and it sure doesn’t feel like the holiday season as much as my roommate and I try to make it.   Believe me we have tried very very hard to make it seem like the holiday season.  We have been listening to Christmas music since getting to site and watching all the standard Christmas movies (I’ve watched Love Actually only twice this year though… so maybe that’s part of my problem).  Since that wasn’t working we decided that we should decorate, but we don’t have any of the usual Christmas decorations (left my lights in the states and there aren’t many Christmas trees here in Cuamba).  So what were we supposed to do!   Well when dealing with limited resources, you do the best you can… so luckily Sam had chalk, and we decided to draw a Christmas tree on our wall with it!  And when doing something like drawing on the wall… the old adage stands… GO BIG OR GO HOME!  So we gave ourselves a pretty large Christmas tree for the year…. Now the only thing it is missing is lights, I considered attaching candles to it, but decided that was probably more of a fire hazard than lights on a tree. So I didn’t risk it. 

Every kids dream... drawing on walls!

The finished project... feels like christmas!

The next step to our Christmas-ification was cookies!  We made homemade sugar cookies but couldn’t find any powdered sugar so we didn’t have frosting but we found sprinkles at one of the stores in town so we decorated with those.  And of course neither of us had cookie cutters but that was easy to replace with just a knife, although some of our shapes need a little imagination to figure out exactly what they were, but we had your typical, mitten, stocking, santa hat, snowmen, and more.  I even cut out the words HO HO HO.  The cookies turned out pretty well.

Some of our beautiful cookies!

Our final step was cooking a Christmas dinner for our site mates, but only Rich could come and being in Mozambique makes it a little harder to make traditional Christmas dinner foods like ham, so we made our new tradition or Christmas Chicken fajitas, including homemade tortillas.  For desert we made homemade cinnamon rolls which also turned out well but also would have been better with a little powdered sugar frosting.  To make it more Christmas-y we made hot apple cider… which was delicious!  Some of you might know… I love apple things (taste and smell) so this was AMAZING, by far the best thing so far!  Between that and our cinnamon rolls our house smelled delicious and even though it was a weird combination of foods, it was delicious!  And we finished out the night watching Home Alone… such a classic Christmas movie.

Who knew I was such a baker....

Christmas Chicken Fajitas!

To top off the holiday cheer, today while we were at the market, we stopped to look at capulanas and look what I found... 

Now if this doesn't add to my christmas cheer, I don't know what will!  Now I have an awesome Christmas Capulana to wear and to remember my first Christmas in Cuamba! 


Feliz Natal (Merry Christmas) Everyone!

Home (for the next 2 years)

After taking my first in-country flight from Maputo to Nampula, we were taken to the most chique hotel that we’ve stayed in thus far for our supervisors conference.  Here our school sent a representative to get information about PC and to meet each other.  After a few days of this (including once again, a large quantity of great food) we were taken to our sites.  Most people where either driven by PC cars or PC rented out chapas to drive them and all of their stuff to their new homes…. But not us, we got to take the train from Nampula to Cuamba.  Now this wouldn’t have been a big deal in most circumstances but keep mind that each of us had the trunk that PC gave us, a box, our two year bag, and then about 3 other bags/suitcases each.  We also had bought a little toaster oven/stove thing in Nampula to take with us before we knew we were going by comboio (train).  So yes, if you did the math that is about 13 bags/boxes/suitcases that needed to be on the train with us.
In case you are wondering how we got all this on the train, well we took the trunks, boxes, and 2 year bags to the train the night before so they could be put on the next morning and then at 5am we left our hotel with our other 3 bags (each) and the stove and headed to the station with a PC staff member and our school representative.  The day before we had forgotten that we had the stove so there were some issues with this and we ended up having to leave it in Nampula and the PC sent it on the train a few days later.  But everything else worked out and we got on the train.  Now they have recently redone these comboios (trains) and we were put in the Executivo class by PC and this new car was climate controlled (ie air conditioned).  So for the next 11ish hours we were pretty comfortable.  The trip was beautiful but sitting in a train that makes a lot of stops for 11 hours is a very long time, but well worth it because we are now at site!
Finally we arrived in Cuamba, and like any other travel junction it was crazy.  Everyone getting off the train and making sure they get all their stuff ( don´t worry folks, I´m pretty sure we won the most stuff award).  Luckily we have some great site mates (a health volunteer and another education volunteer) and they met us at the train station with a IFP car to take all of our stuff to the IFP.  The IFP is a whopping 7k outside the actual city of cuamba, so once we made that trip (by car it was fine, since then Iºve had the joys of walking it several times) and unloaded our stuff into our new home... we headed across the yard to Rich´s house to enjoy the dinner they had gotten for us and the cake Colin had made!  That was great not to have to worry about food after traveling all day!  Then we headed back home to set up our trusty mosquito nets and unpack a little.
We´ve been at site now for about a week and a half, I´ve survived my first sickness here in cuamba... some sort of stomach bug, Ive learned to always have lots of TP, bread, and other necessities on stock so if both you and your roommate are sick for multiple days and have no energy to make the 7k trip into town you will have enough supplies, we came dangerously close to being out of several things.
Sam and I have made the trip to town about 12 times (there is 1 and back is 2...ect) and have gotten a balea (a ride) about half of those times... pretty good luck so far.  But today we finally bought bikes!  I have to say biking cuts a whole lot of time off the hour walk that it is but it also cuts the chances of us getting a ride.  I think it is worth it, plus it gives me an excuse to get some exercise (and by excuse I mean a reason to do it).   So far I really like it here, minus that it is really really hot!  I am in basically a constant state of sweat, accept for when it rains, which gives us a little break from the heat, but makes it that much harder to get to town.  Cuamba is surrounded by mountains, although I´m pretty sure they are to far away to get to to explore, but Iºm sure in the next 2 years Sam and I will check that fact out!  School doesnºt start for another few months so I have lots of time to plan and explore.  I think this is long enough, so until next time (which I will try to make it more often from now on)

End of Training

A lot happened in the last few weeks of training, we had more language, more tech, model school, the provincial elections, thanksgiving, our host family celebrations and then swearing in!  Lingua (language) and tech were pretty much the same as every other week so I’ll just tell you about escola modela (model school) and all the celebrations we had.
Model school was week 7/8 of training.  We were each assigned a grade and class to teach and then we planned lessons, each English teacher taught 4 or 5 lessons and there were 2 or 3 teachers per class, and then we had to write, administer, and grade a test at the end of all of it.  I was assigned to teach otava (8th grade) and so the other 8th grade teachers and I planned a unit about School subjects and daily routines.
Our students volunteered to come to school for a week during their summer vacation and all they got was a week of English, Math, Physics, and Biology lessons, a notebook, a pen, cookies every day, juice after the test, and a certificate saying that they participated. I’m not sure how many students in the US would give up some of their summer vacation for this… I probably wouldn’t have when I was 12.  Since our students were volunteers, we had a range of ages…  I’m pretty sure we had a legitimate 5 year old and her 6 year old sister in my class, along with about 20 other students ranging from 9-15 probably.  At the end of our class the majority of our students passed and did pretty well on our test.  Overall it was a good week of practice and it felt good to get back into teaching and it was good to see what worked with these students and what didn’t.  Although, I will be teaching a different age and hopefully my students will have a little more English than my students in model school, but at least I’m prepared now if they don’t.
During the week of model school, Mozambique had its provincial elections.  There has been lots of talk about these and about possible violence during them.  Luckily nothing happened near me and there really was not a whole lot throughout Mozambique during the day of the elections or after they announced the winners, but don’t worry my dear readers, Peace Corps took every precaution and had us basically on lockdown and we weren’t supposed to leave our houses and had a bag packed, just in case we had to leave quickly.  Luckily, none of that was really necessary.
After model school, it was time for Thanksgiving.  All of Moz 21 helped cook different dishes and then we had one big feast at the PC Office in Namaacha.  I was in the group that made green bean casserole, and let me just say, cooking in Mozambique takes a long long time.  As a standard, many of the different dishes including the 5 turkeys were about a half hour late.  But it was all delicious.  We had some of the best turkey I have ever had, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, cheesy mashed potatoes, stuffing, sweet potatoes, corn bread, pecan and pumpkin pie, ice cream, and probably more, but that’s all I can remember now.  Let me just say that after eating Mozambican food for the last 8 weeks, it was good to have some American food and it made it feel a lot more like Thanksgiving.  We all stuffed ourselves in true American-Thanksgiving fashion (probably more so) and many people got a little sick after all the food.
Two days later we had our host family celebrations.  They Maes (host moms) really pulled out all the stops for this meal.  They started cooking super early in the morning and made a lot of great food!  I participated in some traditional dancing that I had been learning throughout training and we performed with some Mozambican women at the beginning of the ceremony.  Then all the families were recognized and received a certificate, and then we all ate lots of food.
Finally we packed up all of our stuff and sent it off to Maputo, and we followed it a day later to swear in as official Peace Corps Volunteers.  Every year the group gets capulanas (basically big things of fabric, used for everything here: carrying a baby, blankets, cleaning, a towel, decorations, and clothes) and has them made into clothes for the swear-in ceremony.  I had a dress made out of it, and we also got ties made for the ambassador as well as our country director.  The swear-in ceremony was held at the U.S. Ambassadors house and we had to take an oath, similar to the one that soldiers take, with a few exceptions.  After Swearing-in we were official Peace Corps Volunteers and would be heading out to different parts of the country the next day.  We were put up in a nice hotel in Maputo and had most of the day to eat good food!  Then the next morning those of us going up to the Northern provinces and the central ones were picked up to go to the airport and get our respective flights either to Nampula or Manica where we would be having a few days of conferences and then heading out to our sites for the next two years!

So that is what you missed in the last few weeks of my PST experience!  Now for the exciting stuff... VOLUNTEER LIFE!

Here comes the sun …

A few of us have talked about going to the “Tres Fronteras” (Three Boarders) for the sunrise for a few weeks now.  And we finally got a group of people to wake up super early and hike in the dark (sorry Mom, it turned out fine so you don’t have to worry… even though I know you will, that’s why I’m telling you after the fact) this last Sunday.  So we ended up having a group of about 12 going waking up and meeting at 3:30 am to head out.  We ended up hustling because the sun was supposed to rise at about 4:45 and we didn’t want to miss it.  So here is a group of about 12 malungos (white people) running down the road with backpacks at 3:30 am to get to the trail as fast as we can to start the hike, it's about 2.5 miles to the trail from where we met.!  Then we walk the long and difficult hike part way in the dark and by the time we were half way up we could turn off our flashlights and see just fine.  We hike and some of the group made it all the way to the top in time for the sunrise, but a few of us stopped about 5 minutes down to see the sunrise.  It was absolutely beautiful and amazing to see and well worth getting up so early and hiking in the dark.  We brought along a bunch of pão (bread), Black Cat (the peanut butter here), M&M’s, a French press and some coffee, and a bottle of wine and had a little feast to the sun rise and some music.  And then continued to hang out on top of the mountain for about 5 hours.  So instead of writing more, I think I will just post some pictures because they will do it much more justice then if I tried to describe it!  This is probably my favorite memory from PST…. At least so far!

Here comes the sun

Justin making some coffee for us

Always interesting things found at the top of the mountain... this time some wishes...

The wishes

Every child's nightmare!

(Written 15/11/2013)

 Ok so many of you know if you have read my blog before… my latrine and I have had some adventures.  There are always cockroaches crawling around, lizards making clicking noises and creeping around, A RAT/MOUSE THING, the “wonderful” smell, my daily butt and thigh workout while I squat to use the actual bathroom, and all the frogs that end up in their today.   Well today I had another scare… in reality it wasn’t as bad as the rat/mouse thing but it sure freaked me out at first. 

So here I am, enjoying my morning bucket bath, when I look down and (between my feet is a small hole that drains the water) usually when I glance down I see the white pipe that lets the water run into the pit latrine…. Well this morning what do I see… black… it looks like the plastic bags that the markets give out but the longer I look at it I realize it is a dark head with two black glossy eyes looking up at me.  Well I freak out jump out of the little shower area, but I am dripping wet and naked so I can’t just leave, plus I’m not completely done with my shower, so what’s a girl to do. Well I rinse off the little soap that remains and brush my teeth, then get dressed all while keeping a very close eye on that creature.  Of course in my head I’m thinking worst case and it’s a snake… more specifically a black momba (eeek).  So I'm probably going to be bitten and die in my latrine, not the most ideal location to die.  and my family is going to realized that I haven't come back from tomaring o banho and come looking for me and find me dead, naked, and being consumed by a black mamba.  (In my defense we recently had a session on dangerous snakes in Mozambique, ,so of course that's all I'm thinking about now)  Once I’m dressed and have everything in my hand, I dump all the remaining water onto the hole, hoping to at least wash the monster down while I have time to run out…. but no this guy is tough.  The said creature begins to move and squirm his way out.  Turns out it was just a big old toad but still brought back terrifying memories of being a child in the bathtub convinced that something was going to crawl up the drain.  I can’t tell you how excited I am not to have a pit latrine once I get to site.  Oh the adventures of a latrine...

The Next 2 years.... Site Placements!

 Ok, so today was a big day full of nerves, excitement, anxiety and of course… it wouldn’t be peace corp without this… a lot of waiting!  Today was an IFP day (the one day a week all the PCTs are together at the IFP in Namaacha and we have what they call Core).  We got information on Model School next week, had a wonderful session on STDs (saw several wonderful pictures) and presentations by several groups about different STDs.  I have to say I think my group was the best… we up a song about Gonarreah (still not sure how to spell it haha) to the tune of Mama Mia (imagine… “Gonarreah, Here we go again Mae Mae How Can I protect myself”).  Then we had lunch, had an info session with the CD (country Director), Carl, then a session on transportation safety and then finally around 15:30 we found out our placements.  Throughout most of the sessions we all tried to listen because it was important information but let’s be honest… we were all pretty anxious, imagining what our placements were going to be. 

So we went outside where the staff had drawn a giant chalk outline of Mozambique (the size of a basketball court), had us all stand in a line, passed out envelopes that we were instructed to read the letter on the outside but not open them yet (because more waiting is needed) and then finally after they thought everyone was done they counted to three and we were able to read where we were going and went to that place on the map. This was followed by Chocolate cake, soda, and some other good food and lots of chatter about everyone’s sites. So now that I’ve made you wait a proper amount of time as well J here it is…  I will be heading north to Cuamba in Niassa providence to be a teacher trainer at the IFP in that city.  This is in the northern region and I am super excited about this.  It will give me a chance to see and live in a completely different area of the country plus I am close to the border of Malawi and just north of the Niassa is Tanzania.  So I will have the potential to do a lot of traveling.

The Heart is my new site Cuamba and the little pink star down by Maputo is where I've been living in Namaacha

It was very interesting and a little surreal to see everyone spread out on the map.  I have grown very close to a lot of people over the past few weeks and it will be very different not being in the same town as them all.  I have some great people around me and will be roommates with Sam a girl from my group.  We have actually been in the same language group since week 2 or so.  We are very excited to get to site and set up our house and get to know our site and the north.  According to Sam Niassa is where all the endangered animals are and there are some reserves and I’ve heard there are some elephants up there so I’m very excited about that!  Cuamba is also surrounded by mountains, so I can hike a lot, and my info and the APCD of the north said that the best way to get around the area is to get a bike!  I’m very excited about this… it will give me a legitimate reason to stay in shape. 

            I am also by a train that can take me to Nampula, (a large city in Nampula province) and along the way, apparently there is a lot of produce sold… although it sounds like Cuamba itself is pretty big.  From what I can tell, I will have a pretty good selection of food!  According to my sheet it is the economical capital of Niassa providence (but the actual capital of the providence is Lichanga).

 I will be living a pretty chique life.  I will have both running water and electricity (for most of the time), will have a pretty good selection of foods, I am close to some of my other good friends, and will be meeting a whole lot of new PCVs because Sam and I are the only two going to Niassa from our group!  I am very excited about the future and actually to actually know where I’m going to be!

Also I'll have a new address at the Northern Moz PC Office.  So here it is:
Caitlin Josten, PCV
Corpo da Paz/US Peace Corps
Rua Dar-Es-Salaam, Nr 14
Bairro Central, Caixa Postal 526
Nampula, Mozambique

Site Visits

Last Sunday we left Namaacha to go out and see Mozambique and visit different volunteers at their sites.  It was a chance to see what different sites were like and to have a break from Namaacha and training.  I went to Homoine in Inhambane province with 3 other PCTs. 

            So Sunday we met left bright and early (well I guess it was still dark out so ignore the bright part) at 4:30 am to drive to Maputo where we got on a chapa.  My group and another group were headed a little further to Tofo in Inhambane, there we were headed to the BEACH for a night!  So we found a chapa to Tofo (with help from some of the language professors.) ok I’ll be honest they basically did everything for us… in training they really baby us and make sure we get to where we need to be (at least in the beginning on the trip).  So we got on the chapa at about 7am and got to Tofo around 2 I think.  Now this wasn’t your typical Mozambican chapa, it was basically a malongo bus (malongo is the local language word for white person).  There were the 7 of us PCTs, a Moz 11er, a South African guy, an English woman, 2 women from Holland, and about 4 other malongos and probably only 7 Mozambicans.  But then again we were going to Tofo a very touristy beach.  When we finally got to the beach we checked into the hostel, changed, and headed to the beach (which was right outside), and then walked along the beach to a restaurant.  I had a salad and a sandwich, both with cheese.  Then we just hung out on the beach and at the restaurant and talked with the volunteers we were visiting. 

            Monday I woke up early walked along the beach, had breakfast on the beach and had some good coffee!  Then I got to cross another ocean off the list because I swam in the Indian Ocean all morning!  It was amazing.  The water was the perfect temperature and the beach was great.  We hung out there until about 11 then headed out.  We got 30 minute or so chapa to Inhambane city, then a boat chapa across the bay to (probably another 30 minutes) Maxixe (pronounced Ma-shi-sh).  This is where 3 of the PCTs were going to visit a volunteer so we ate lunch here met up with the Volunteer and then my group got some groceries and headed out to get one last (45 minute) chapa to Homoine. We were staying at the IFP (the teacher training school) which is about a 30 minute walk outside of the village. 

            While we were in Homoine, we got to sit in on one of the volunteers classes, help the other volunteer teach an English class to her colleagues, talk with the director of the school, I played volleyball with some of the students and professors, tour the hospital in town, see the library one of the volunteers opened, walk around town, eat lots of great food (including Mac & Cheese, and Calzones… YUM!), play lots of cards (I’ve now learned how to play rummy), and explore Homoine.  Then on Thursday morning at 430am our chapa picked us up outside of the IFP and we headed back to Maputo and then back to Namaacha.  This time we were on our own and I think it was the PC’s way of testing us to see if we had learned anything and could get ourselves back by ourselves haha.  We did… after about 12 hours of travel, one frango and arroz meal, several people trying to ripe us off in Maputo, some very helpful and kind Mozambicans showing us where the chapas were and helping us get the people who were trying to ripe us off away (yes people we know it shouldn't cost us 100 mets a person to get downtown Maputo, when it only costs 70 to get to Namaacha… back off! Especially when we just get off an 8 hr chapa ride without eating a lot on it.  Let’s just say when I got back home I tomar’d banho (took a bath), then took a long nap (which was interrupted for dinner and a brief chat with the family about my trip) and then back to bed.  Travel is exhausting but it was great to see some more of this beautiful country!

“Desculpa Frango”

So last Tuesday we had a cooking day for our language and cross-culture lessons.  My language group and another language group combined too cook for our Maes.  We were supposed to make an American dish and the Maes were going to make a Mozambican dish.  We decided to make chicken tacos and desert crepes (one of the girls in our group lived in France for a year so she wanted to make these).  We were hoping that the Maes would kill the chicken for us to make our food, but nope, that was not the case.  We were told that one of us would be killing the chicken.  That person was not me, I was going to try but when it actually came time I realized that there was no way I would be able to do it.  I could watch but doing it was not going to happen.  Luckily one of the girls in our group had no problem doing it and she actually ended up killing the chicken for our Maes’ meal too.  After killing the chicken she said “Desculpa Frango” which basically means, “I’m sorry Chicken” and the Maes and other Mozambicans around loved that she apologized to the chicken and laughed for a long time and kept bringing it back up throughout the day (and several days later).  After the killings, we had to pluck and clean the chicken.  I pulled some of the feathers off but I have to say that the whole thing was disgusting, more reason for me to be a vegetarian.  For those of you who have never had the pleasure of plucking a chicken... first you put the whole chicken in boiling water for a few minutes then you start plucking.  The smell of the chicken and the fact that I am plucking feathers off of it was gross!  If I never have to participate in that again, I will be extremely happy.

Learning how to scrape the inside of a coconut

Once all the cleaning was done, we had to cut up the chicken, which I had no problems doing ( I cut through those bones like a champ).  One of the professors was impressed with how easily I cut it for how squeamish I was about killing it, my thoughts were that it looked more like the chicken I’ve dealt with when I was doing it… i.e. DEAD, featherless, and inside-less!

Making our tortillas

            While our chicken cooked we learned how to cook some of the food the Maes were making.  And then continued cooking our tortillas, cutting up our veggies and cooking the chicken.  I have to say, for our first time cooking in Mozambique, I was thoroughly impressed.  Our tacos and our crepes turned out delicious!  All our professors and PC staff that were there wanted to know how to make them and some of the Maes even said that we would be making them in our houses again!  So whoever thought I couldn’t cook, surprise I can!  

            Since then Minha Mae has let me help cook a little and at least make my own egg in the morning for breakfast. Other than that, she and my sister still do most of the cooking.  

The Mozambican meal... couve and rice, xima and chicken

Está frio

Ok So I'm back, just want to give you a little update before I post about my life.  Internet here is very, very different from in the states... and I think I've finally got it figured out.  Basically I have this little modem thing (basically a USB drive) that has a sim card in it.  Yep, thats right, like what you put in a phone.  And I buy credit from a guy on the street wearing a vest with one of the phone companies.  Yes, it feels like what I'd imagine a drug deal feels like.  It doesn't matter if it is the correct company cause each guy has all three companies, Vodacom, Movitel, and MCell.  You buy different incraments of meticias (the currency here).  When you hand over the correct amount of Mets the vest wearing guy hands you a teeny tiny scratch off card.  The card has a Pin number under the scratch off stuff and if you are buying it for phone credit you put this Pin into your phone with another number and call and boom you have credit.  For Internet you do the same thing on your computer and then you have to text (all on a program on your computer) a number with which internet package you want.  You can get so many MB for X amount of time (a day, a week, or a month).   Then finally you have internet.  It took me a little bit to figure out how to convert the Meticias credit into MB, but we had a current PCV come to training and he explained it with nice charts for us to copy.  So this is why I have been MIA from the internet for a while and hopefully that won't happen again.

I don't really know what write about right now, so I will probably mainly post for the sake of letting you all know that I am alive and well.  I still love it here, minus the fact that it has been raining on and off since Saturday.  Also... Mozambique is COLD!  Ok not like Iowa winter cold, but when it's been raining and you don't have heat in your house and the temperature is in the 50s... it's cold.  Also since you were moving to Africa, so you brought mostly short sleeved things and skirts... it gets cold!  But apparently the weather is supposed to get better Thursday and Friday, and it will probably be 100 degrees!  It is a little different in Namaacha where I am staying currently because we are in the mountains and the weather is very very random.   Literally one morning I woke up and got ready to go to class and it was misting and cold.  Then around 12 when I went back home for lunch it was sunny and very warm.  Then about an hour later it was freezing.  Basically I've learned to always have at least a sweatshirt if not your raincoat with you at all times here, because you never know what the weather is going to do.

Last weekend a group of us climbed to the three points.  This is where Swaziland, Mozambique and South Africa all meet.  It was a long hike, I'd say it took about 2 hours both ways and was well worth it. It was beautiful.  I am constently blown away by how pretty it is here.  I love the mountains (minus the effect it has on the weather).  We hung out at the top for a while and enjoyed our lunche (snack in portuguese) then hiked back down.  I don't really know what to write about it so I'll just post some pictures now.  

Peace Corps Problems: I’ve developed a Portuguese stutter!

        So with a little over a week of language lessons, I have learned a lot but there still is a large language barrier.  There is a lot of talking in circles and basically using my small, but growing vocabulary, to say everything, but I am using complete (maybe sometime incorrect) phrases to talk with people now.  This has resulted in what I like to call my new Portuguese stutter. 

Basically when I am talking and I am not sure of a word, the pronunciation, or the conjugation… I began just spouting out different ways to say it.  I don’t even give anyone any time to correct me or help me until I have exhausted all options.  I blame this stutter on my friend Dione, because she started this trend of just saying word after word after word in our small language class.  For example, I was trying to figure out how to say, “Where were you running yesterday?”  and I said… “ Ontem, Onde corremos, corria, corriamos, corriava, corrias, correr?”  Then I finally took a breath.  This is usually followed by some laughter and then sometimes, but not always a correction.  In the case of my family, often they just answer the question and ignore my new stutter.  I guess I can take it as a win, that I know all those different forms of to run… even if they aren’t all real conjugations or the correct one. 

       I also have another Peace Corps Problem… I don’t have a mirror!  There is only one that I have access to in my house and it is the back of a china cabinet, which is very full and the mirror is warped (at least I hope so, otherwise I have all sorts of new problems) and the room is very dark.  For a while I was getting ready with nothing and then when I got somewhere with a mirror, the first thing I’d do was check what I looked like, usually it was ok.  What I realized a week into this was, my computer has a camera and I can use that like a mirror.  It still isn’t great, but I can at least see myself.
         Now I know I’m in the Peace Corps, because I got really resourceful today.  I felt like putting on a little eye makeup, just some eyeliner and mascara… but my room is not very well lit so it was even hard to see what I was doing on my screen.  So I thought of what I’ve used in the states, and one of those light up mirrors came to mind.  So I took my headlamp and made the strap as big as possible, put it around my screen and WA-LAH… I had a light-up makeup mirror!  If that isn’t a win for the day, I don’t know what is!

The result... and I figured you'd all want to actually see me :)

Refer to Blog Name (aka I'm still here)

Ok everyone, I finally got an internet modem for my computer so I will be able to keep you updated more!
It has been a crazy 2 weeks filled with meeting new people, language classes, technical classes, learning about Mozambique and the PC, and exploring this new place (Namaacha) that I will call home for the next few months.  I have some blogs that I wrote throughout the last few weeks that I have posted to catch you up and I will be able to post more often now.

Let me just say that Mozambique is beautiful and I absolutely love it and the people so far.  The language barrier is the biggest challenge for me, but I have made a lot of improvement from when I first got here.  I have to keep reminding myself that I have only been here for 2 weeks and really I have only been learning the language for about a week.  When I started I could barely understand anything people said, and was only speaking the very few spanish words I remembered.  Now I am able to speak in some complete sentences and get my point across, as well as I understand WAY more now.

That is all for now!

My name is Catya

(Written Oct 05, 2013)

So I have been in Namaacha for one week.  I can’t believe that is all the time I have been here, it definitely feels like longer because so many things have happened and changed in my life in the last week/week and a half since getting to Mozambique. 

First of all, my name has changed since being in Namaacha.  Something in the middle of my name is very hard for Mozambicans to say and I was warned of this by one of our Medical Guys at the hotel during our health interviews.  He said most volunteers here named Caitlin end up being Catya.  So when I got to my host family and introduced myself as Caitlin and no one could say it, I said that they could call me that.  So to my family and many other Mozambicans I have met, I am now Catya. 

I also have a whole new family I'm living with.  I have Minha Mia (my mom… in Portuguese), her name is Ecinet, two host sisters, one host brother and two nieces.  Because of communication barriers, I don’t know a whole lot about all of them yet, but I am slowly learning.  The oldest sister, is a professor of crianças (of little kids) and is only at our house on the weekends.  She has two girls, Matild, 10 years old, and Kelly, 6 months old.  My other sister is 17 and her name is Suzette, I feel like she is my babysitter.  She also does basically all the cooking and cleaning and will never let me help her.  My brother’s name is Jose, he is 16 and loves to hang out and play with Matild when she is here. 

My yard

The front of my house

It is very strange living with them because of how limited my Portuguese is and they only know a few words in English.  It has been a challenge, but I still love it here.  They are super nice and help me do basically everything even though most if it I could probably do on my own. I always ask and try to help make my food and wash dishes but they refuse to let me.  I was able to wash my own clothes on Friday but Suzette was instructing me the whole time and basically trying to do it for me. 

The house is pretty small but has a pretty big yard to hang out in.

  And of course I’m sure you are all wondering about my bathroom situation.  I don’t really mind the latrine because everything can go in it, as opposed to the volunteers with regular toilets who have to flush by dumping a bucket of water into it, they have to throw all their toilet paper in the garbage. 

My bathroom

I was also digging the bucket baths (in the same room as the latrine in basically a little out house in my yard) until last night.  Basically I heat up some water, dump it in my shower bucket, put the perfect amount of room temperature water in it so I can stand dumping in on my skin, take it outside to the latrine and start showering.  It took a little practice to be able to wash my hair because it’s hard to get my hair wet, and get all the soap out.  I don’t wash my hair everyday (more like every other/every few days) and I have only conditioned my hair once, because that was WAY too much work!  I’m pretty sure I still have a few layers of soap on my skin but I really feel very clean after each bath, plus I have to bathe twice a day, once before breakfast and once at night before dinner.  I have already tried to get out of bathing at night some days, because I just don't feel like I need to, but Minha Mia will not let that fly.

Ok now for the reason I am now uneasy about my latrine/bucket baths at night.  Up until last night I had only seen a few cockroaches and some lizards, and I can deal with those.  But last night when I went in to take my bath, I turned on the light and there sat a HUGE mouse!  It was more the size of a rat but looked like a mouse!  Surprisingly it was kinda cute, but I DID NOT want to be in a small contained room with it!  So I panicked ran out of the room, composed myself went back in and it was hiding behind a water bucket.  So I made a bunch of noise, and in ran all the way along the wall to another bucket of water.  This is when I moved into the room, away from the door, so I wasn’t blocking its exit and kicked the bucket it was behind.  Mister Mouse tried to jump and climb the wall right there and then ran out of the room climbed up the wall and was gone.  Needless to say I took a very quick and bad bath and am now a little scared to go back to the latrine in the dark.  YIKES!  I guess welcome to Africa!

(10/6/2013 Small update.)  So after seeing a giant rat/mouse thing (not sure which one it was, looked more like a mouse, for those of you who knew about Millie, the dwarf hamster I had in college with my roommates, it kind of looked like that, but giant and had a big gross tail) I’ve been kind of scared of going into my latrine, especially in the dark/at night.  So of course today (the day after the sighting) the power is out for the evening.  Now I usually take my night bucket bath around 7ish, so I was hoping tonight that they wouldn’t make me take one since it was dark.  Well I must have forgotten I was in Mozambique and this happens all the time, so life goes on as normal… because sure enough 7 o’clock roles around and I’m instructed to go take my bath and that my sister had heated up my water for me.  I cautiously went into the bathroom with my head lamp, shined the light all around by the door then where I could see from the door and finally all over.  No mouse and only saw one cockroach.  So I quickly bathed, while continuously shining my head lamp all over the place in case I had missed something the first time.  Needless to say, I did not take a very good bath again tonight… good thing I’ll be taking another one tomorrow morning! 

Jose and Matild having a water fight while doing laundry

Staging/First Few Days in Mozambique

(Written Sept 28^th, 2013)

These last few days have just flown by and been a whirlwind of craziness.  To start with I AM FINALLY IN MOZAMBIQUE!  But I’m getting ahead of myself, so I’ll start at the beginning for you.  

The view from my hotel balcony in Maputo, Mozambique

Monday after I got to our hotel in Philly, I met up with some other volunteers who also arrived a day early.  We went out to eat, got a few drinks and then just hung out and got to know each other.  We were all pretty exhausted because most of us got very little sleep the night before because of nerves and excitement, so we went to bed relatively early.  Then Tuesday, everyone arrived and our staging officially started.  It included some icebreakers (although not as many as I expected and honestly, was dreading), and then going over some general PC things.  It was great to finally meet the people who would be going on this adventure with me.  We have 50 people in our group and all of them are amazing.  After our 7 hr staging we all split up for our last meals and then came back to the hotel and played some cards and had some more bonding time.  At about 11:30 we went to do one of 3 things; either go get some sleep, repack, or just chill until we left at 2AM Wednesday morning for the airport.  I figured that it wasn’t a good idea for me to go to sleep since it was already about 11:30, so I repacked, took a shower and relaxed until it was time for me to head to the lobby to check out. 

After making sure everyone was in the lobby, we all loaded up two big charter buses (which was great because everyone had 2 seats to themselves so we could stretch out and sleep if we wanted to), and then the fun really started around 2:30.  We left the hotel, drove about 2 hrs to JFK, then had to wait until about 7:30 when the check-in finally opened, got through security and then had to wait until 11 when we boarded our flight.  (PS  I only got about 30 minutes of sleep on the bus.)  Our flight, 15hrs to Johannesburg, South Africa, was filled with lots of movies, games, bonding time, eating, and finally sleeping.  By the time we were in Johannesburg we were all in such a haze.  We had no idea what time it was, what day it was, or really where we were.  After figuring out that it was already Thursday and that we had basically lost Wednesday completely in the air and figuring out the time with the +7hr time zone change, we realized that we had a 4 hr layover until we boarded our flight at 1:05pm to Maputo, Mozambique.  This flight was much easier.  It was about 45 min. and I slept almost the entire way.  We were greeted by the Country Director and some of the other staff, and surprisingly, we all got every piece of luggage with everything in it.  (1 point for Moz 21). 

All 50 of us crammed into 3 vans, while most of our luggage was put into the back of a pickup with a trailer hooked up to it.  Then took a short ride through the town and checked into our hotel.  And then, of course more fun started, our first round of vaccines took place and then dinner. 

View from my balcony in Maputo, Moz

Today, was full of lots of icebreakers and general information about Mozambique and PC, and of course more time just to hang out with everyone.  We met some of our PC Mozambique staff and someone from the embassy came and basically told us everything that could go wrong and all the issues that there are in the country.  Generally, I feel that Mozambique is a very safe country, and PC has a very good handle on what is going on and where it is not safe for us to be.  Then we learned how to put together and use our water filter and all about the Peace Corps Moz Medical Office.  The PC Moz staff seems awesome. Of course following this… was more vaccines!  So far my in country vaccines only total 4 but my arms are still pretty sore, should be fun moving my luggage tomorrow! 

I still don’t feel like I'm in Mozambique.  We have been staying at a very nice hotel overlooking water and its beautiful here.  We’ve had showers, air conditioning, a pool, running water, and pretty good food for the past 2 days.  Tomorrow we leave for Namaacha (na-ma-sha), which is about 2hrs away to meet our host families.  I am very excited to start this journey and feel as though it will be a reality check, since it will be more like my life for the next 27 months.  I have very little Portuguese skills so it should be very interesting communicating for the first few weeks and will probably be a lot of pantomiming.  Wish me luck!

Another View from my balcony in Maputo, Moz

View from my balcony in Maputo, Moz