Settling In…Finally!

I am happy to report that the dust has finally settled a bit and things are beginning to become more “normal” (at least as normal as it gets for living in rural Africa! :)).

We attended a beautiful memorial service for Lena and Alden at the beginning of this month in Maputo. Our entire training group reconnected, as well as the incredibly supportive community of other Americans living here in Mozambique. The ceremony took place at the Ambassador’s house, the same location as our swearing in ceremony almost exactly one month earlier. Stories from their closest friends in the group were shared, and all Moz 17 trainees participated in the symbolic gesture of laying a rose by their pictures to say a final goodbye. After the weekend was over, I felt some form of closure and that it was possible to move forward. It was incredibly therapeutic to laugh, cry, share hopes and uncertainty about the next 2 years here with the people I started this journey with and who had so quickly become my close friends. There are still some who have decided that they need to go home to the US to heal and may return after 45 days, some who want to switch sites, and some who are still debating if they want to continue their service. While the group dynamics have changed a bit, I believe that all 48 of us have a strong bond regardless of where we end up, and, for those who are still here, we are stronger and closer than ever before.

We returned to site from Maputo enthusiastic and energized to finally have the time to settle into our new home now that all the traveling from holidays and memorial services was over. We jumped right into adding personal touches to our house like hanging paintings and putting up pictures from home. That week, we also hired an empregada, a woman who helps with household chores. Chris had told me that it was common to hire someone to help you around the house as he had seen from his time living in Haiti. I initially scoffed at the idea as someone who prefers, and generally enjoys doing my own house cleaning. But, that was before I knew what it was like to live without running water. I quickly learned in our first few weeks at site that simple tasks like doing the dishes and laundry take hours, not minutes as they did in the states. Not to mention pumping and hauling the water to the house, an arduous task that I never had to do before. Well, thank goodness we found Catarina. She does all of this Monday through Friday, and cleans the house which is constantly filled with sand as well as a few extras like buying and killing a chicken for dinner! And now that school has started, I actually have time to lesson plan and enjoy some free time rather than doing chores all day long. There is no doubt that her help has made things easier but as of now for me anyway, things are a little awkward. :) I feel strange having someone in the house doing things that I feel a tinge of guilt for not doing myself, being in my personal space 5 days a week, and trying to communicate in a language and cultural context that is still very new to me. We are really hoping to forge a strong relationship with Catarina and I think in time as I get more comfortable with this empregada concept, we will. Another exciting development when we returned was that summer break was over and the professors came back to school. We were no longer the only people living on the mission and it was very exciting to finally see some activity! Most of the professors here are around our age and have all been incredible friendly and helpful. The vast majority are male so unfortunately for me, I haven’t quite found my Mozambican lady friends yet and I am still getting my sea legs in this cross cultural thing. Of course, Chris is already making great relationships as his natural talent to connect to any culture is shining through and I look to him for guidance in making new friends here. Along with the professors, the kids have started to come back as well. Many students live on the mission campus in dorms as they come from all over the country to attend our school. It’s awesome to now feel a sense of the community, especially since it was a ghost town the first few weeks we were here. Oh, and along with the community coming back, our 2 hours of electricity came back too! We finally have lights, and working outlets to plug in our electronics from 7-9pm and it’s wonderful. I have to say that living without it for a month has made me appreciate the 2 hours so much more. I realize now that is all the time I need whereas before, I thought 2 hours wouldn’t even be close to enough. And, I can confidently say that when it goes out (as it already has the past 2 nights) I’ll be ok without it.  Aside from electricity and empregadas, another new staple has come into our lives and it’s the main reason we are here in Mozambique. The school year has started and we have begun teaching! We learned a week or so before classes started that I would be teaching 11th and 12th grade English and Chris would be teaching 11th grade English and 10th grade physics. It’s not math, but still a science and a subject that he has to teach fully in Portuguese so he is happy. Classes didn’t actually start on the day they were supposed to because the professors didn’t have their schedules. Only a day or so before, Chris learned from our director that we were expected to make the schedules for everyone as the previous volunteers had done in the past. While he was more than happy to assist, it was a bit of a difficult task considering that we had no clue how the schedule was supposed to work. After 2 very long days of Chris, with some of my help, muddling through scheduling software we had never used and coordinating times for 25 professors, a schedule of some sort was created. So, we were able to start class on day 2! We showed up with a haphazard curriculum, no clue as to where we were supposed to go and a general sense of not knowing exactly how things would work. But, a couple of days into it now we are getting the feel for this! I am already feeling personal satisfaction when I see a kid in the classroom understand when I talk about conjugating verbs in the 3rd person singular form, and I am really enjoying the process of writing out a lesson plan too.

The beginning of our school year occurred in typical African fashion where things were more disorganized and slower to start than we are used to in the US. But, the longer we are here, the more we realize the benefit of learning to go with the flow, and appreciating this more relaxed lifestyle. And, we are also coming to realize that while we came here with many goals in mind about specific tasks we wanted to accomplish, after the crazy four months we have already had, just living contently in Mozambique is an accomplishment in itself.