Things that go Bump in the Night (and During the Day, too!)

Applying for Peace Corps is a long and trying process. We had to fill out an extensive application and endless forms, write essays and do a few interviews.  A benefit to this requirement of constant introspection is that it makes you really think about why you want to do Peace Corps. And for me, one of the things I kept coming back to was that I wanted to get out of my comfort zone and raise my level of tolerance.  I kinda felt like I had become a wuss in the states. I worried too much about little things that shouldn’t bother me from small daddy long-legs in the kitchen, to thinking the slightest bit of vertigo meant there was something seriously wrong. In some ways, it felt like I was already an 80-year-old! I found myself thinking about my younger, reckless teenage years when I threw more caution to the wind and took a lot more chances.  Now, I’m not saying I always made the smartest decisions then and that there’s some things I’m glad have changed since those days, but I missed my “eh, don’t worry about it!” attitude. I had a sneaking suspicion that moving half way around the world to a new continent, full of bugs, would do the trick.

My initial glimpse of creepy crawlies happened during the first 10 weeks here while in training in Namaacha.  During our first night of homestay, a cockroach, almost the same size as my hand, made an appearance on our bedroom wall. We were lying down, about to go to sleep when we spotted him in the corner. I let out a girlie yelp and instinctively stood up on the bed for fear that it would find my feet (we hadn’t hung our mosquito net yet). Chris quickly grabbed a shoe and smashed him, and thus began our life full with bugs. Aside from cockroaches, Namaacha also had an abundance of long, chunky brown millipedes they called “Maria Cafés”. I would later learn these are actually called the African Giant Millipede and are all over Mozambique. Sighting one of these on a weekly basis is pretty common.  I was lucky that Namaacha broke me in easy, because the nasty bug friends came out in full force once I got to site. My very first night in Mapinhane, I had a close encounter with some bats. Maybe they’re not an insect, but a creepy crawly none the less. Although it was a dark and stormy night, the adrenaline from finally arriving to our site gave me courage. Our bathroom was outside of our house and had no electricity, but I would brave the storm with a lantern and go take a bucket bath before bed. I had already dealt with cockroaches and millipedes, how bad could it be? I was just pouring the last cup of water for a final rinse when I heard something above my head. I couldn’t tell what it was but it sped up the bathing process none the less. Then, the creature landed on my foot which caused me to abruptly run out of the shower house, screaming, with the towel barely concealing my lady parts. When I reached the house, breathing heavily, I told Chris I had encountered something, although I wasn’t sure what it was. He took a flashlight into the bathroom, like the dutiful husband he is, to investigate. He returned only to say, “Uhhh, you don’t even want to know”. Turns out bats were flying overhead and crawling on the floor, and apparently wanted to let me know they were sharing the bathroom with me. Shortly after the batty night, I found a scorpion chilling inside the house which I promptly killed with one of my favorite toxic substances, Bygone (a spray that kills insects) but it was still quite jarring. Then, a special guest appeared during my very first day of teaching in my very first lesson. A big-ass (and I mean HUGE) hairy tarantula was crawling on the wall in the back corner. The kids said “não faz mal, teacher”, meaning it won’t do any harm but I still wanted to crawl out of my skin. Tarantulas, in my opinion, are the DEFINITION of all that is creepy/scary/gross about bugs and insects. They really hit that biological instinct of danger for me. When I was a kid, I thought gremlins were hiding in my closet but it changed to tarantulas when I got older (although I won’t lie and say I’m no longer scared of gremlins, because they still freak me out. Seriously. Watch the movie. Sooooo not for kids).  It was not an uncommon theme to see these hairy beasts in my nightmares, as this was the visual form my subconscious chose for my fears. So knowing all this, you would think I’d have run out of the classroom screaming, just like I did with the bats, but surprisingly I didn’t. A part of me sure wanted to, but I actually kept my composure much better than I would have if I was not in front of my new students. I couldn’t have them think their new American teacher couldn’t handle a stupid spider that wasn’t even harmful. So I breathed, tried to forget about it, and was lucky enough to have a camera with me that day to get photographic evidence. And I survived. The classroom tarantula gave me a huge boost of confidence that my tolerance had gone way up. And might I add, since that day, I haven’t once had a nightmare involving a spider.  After the initial incidents, human and bug life lived pretty harmoniously for a while. We shared our house with tons of geckos, cockroaches and termites. We found all kinds of spiders like daddy long legs, the charging variety, and wall spiders spanning the size of a small drink coaster. But they no longer bothered me. In fact, I’d watch the geckos and spiders eat pesky, buzzing house flies and mosquitoes and found myself cheering for them! And now, I’ve even taken to naming some of the critters that make a daily appearance like Norman, the wall spider who lives behind the truck in my bedroom or Raul, the gecko who hangs out by the front window at night. We did have a few surprises thrown in the mix. A rat who really enjoyed dry pasta. And the moth larvae that were falling through our mosquito net at night. Or the sand fleas that set up shop in the bottom of our feet, requiring a morning of digging with a needle (all together now, “EEEEEWWWW”). But these were really more of a nuisance then cause for fear. In the last week though, our creep-tastic bug cred has gone through the roof. Chris and I were sitting on our front porch, cooling down after a long run, when suddenly I hear Chris say, “oh.my.god”. “WHAT, WHAT?”, I yell. “It’s a snake! Go get the machete!” Sure enough about 50 feet from us, a large snake with its head rearing, is staring in our direction. I run inside per Chris’ request but then ask him if it’s really a good idea to kill this thing. But if we’ve learned one thing from our Mozambican neighbors, you can never let a snake live because of the poisonous factor. So Chris slowly tip-toes behind the snake’s line of site and WHACK!!!!!!!!! He cuts the dude’s head off with a machete. Yeah, that happened. He throws down the machete a few more times just to make sure he’s dead, then we find out it needs to be burned so his friends don’t come looking for him. All of this too, has been photographed if you don’t believe me by the way. Afterwards, we went on the internet to see if it was that infamous Southern African snake, the black mamba, which is not uncommon around our village in the bush. From our Mozambican eye-witnesses and the picture on wikapedia, we’re pretty sure it was. Chris earned major badass points that day, and it was one of those situations where you think, “wow, I can’t believe this is my life!”. Then a few days ago, my bug tolerance was put to the ultimate test. It was a normal night in our electricity-less house, when I wanted to put something away in a small room we use as a pantry.  I opened the door and shined the flashlight in, and there he was, as if he wanted to be spotted. Another big-ass, hairy tarantula. Not as big as the one in my classroom, but still quite large and ummm, oh yeah, THIS ONE IS IN MY HOUSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! My natural reaction is what told me I’ve definitely graduated from daddy-long-leg worries. I breathed in, shut the door and calmly told Chris that there is a spider in the room. And I mean a big one. He opened the door to take a look and confirmed that my eyes were not deceiving me, that indeed, a tarantula was hanging out in our pantry. Unsure of how to kill this thing, we called our Mozambican friend to come over. He said that while they can bite, he assured us they’re not aggressive and “não faz mal”, but suggested we take a machete to if we, understandably, didn’t want it living in our house.  He took a swing for it, but it bolted too quickly into the corner. And believe it or not, that’s the end of the story. Yes, you heard that right. There is a living tarantula somewhere in my pantry.  And I’m not having a panic attack. Our friend thinks that he’s probably been living there for quite some time based on how big he’s gotten, so I keep telling myself if he wasn’t a problem before, he shouldn’t be now. I used to pop in at night without a flashlight, which I will no longer do since we spotted him, but I will still go in there. l wonder if he’ll make another appearance every time I open that door, but I still have the courage to open it. So today I feel a sense of pride. I’ve come face-to-face with one of my biggest fears, living in my house no less, and did not go crazy. Now, maybe I am jinxing myself and there will be a much scarier part #2 to the tarantula in my pantry story. But as of now, I’d still say that fits the requirement for stepping out of my comfort zone. Of course, there are endless opportunities to do this here: speaking a new language, being in a new culture, living with no electricity, dealing with sickness and being the weird foreign language teacher in a classroom of 60 kids. So, while I still may have problems with gremlins, I think my teenage self would be very proud of my progress.

And Were Off and Running Again

Not only have we begun our second school year, but we’ve finally started to pick up one of our favorite past habits. We can proudly call ourselves “runners” again, now that we’re braving the African summers to clock a few miles a day.

Before we came to Mozambique, we were both pretty dedicated to hitting the pavement several times a week. Our hope was to continue here, but our motivation got lost with the countless adjustments we were dealing with last year. Then after 15 months of a carb heavy diet, we were starting to see the results of our slacking. The physical aspect is a part of it, but it’s mental too. Running was a release of tension and a time to unwind after a long work day or way to get your mind right first thing in the morning. Happily, our Moz life is generally much calmer and the stress level is way down, but regardless, I was missing that time of tranquility and the endorphins that follow. So during the lull period after our South Africa trip and waiting for school to start, we begrudgingly laced up our Nike’s and headed outside. The first few times were a bit of a struggle but very quickly I remembered why I used to like to run so much. It’s not easy while you’re doing it but the sense of accomplishment and satisfaction you feel when you’re done can’t be beat. I definitely needed that burst of good feeling too because at the end of December while sitting in my house with nothing to do except sweat in the unbearable heat, I started thinking, “whoa, I’ve got one more year of this?” I’ve heard it’s not uncommon to hit a wall between your first and second year of Peace Corps service, but I was sure I wouldn’t be one of those people. I figured if I didn’t go home for the holiday break, I’d be immune to the mid-service slump but that wasn’t the case. For months on end, time seemed to run away from me and then all of the sudden, I was counting every hour.  I’d made it through much harder times during this experience, so I had enough foresight to know I’d be out of the funk shortly. Putting back on my running shoes helped to put things into perspective. You see, Running for miles can require you to play a sort of mental game in order to make it to the end. There are times when you’re hot, tired and the ipod has died on you, making it seem impossible to take one more step forward. So, you tell yourself if only you can keep running until that tree in the distance, you can walk the rest of the way. It’s all about tricking yourself into a new goal so you don’t feel so bad about stopping. But the surprising part is that 99% of the time, you don’t start to walk when you reach that tree. In fact, you keep running until the end, to that mile marker you initially intended to reach. My mid-service slump forced me to seek out a “tree”, the first time I had to do so since the initial challenges I faced during training and first getting to site. As of today, I already reached that tree and I’m still running to the 27-months-of-service finish line.

Starting to teach again brought me back to the reason I am here and reminded me of the satisfaction I so frequently feel. And the beginning of the school year gave another reminder as to how far we’ve come. Now, we understood both the language and cultural context of the school’s opening ceremony and parents meeting. We already know school policies and procedures, most of the teachers and students, and are bracing for our schedule to be changed numerous times. It’s really cool to be at a point where we are no longer doing something new, but starting the cycle over again. We can finally put all of the lessons and experiences to good use.  This year, we walked into our classrooms for the first day of school with confidence and poise. I can already feel a difference in my teaching and it’s only been a few weeks.  My style and timing are much more natural, I’m not afraid to switch to Portuguese to discipline if needed and lesson planning is a breeze. Chris is no longer clutching his notebook to read a Portuguese script for his Chemistry lesson. Instead, he’s got a command of the language and knows which activities will work for a science class. We’re happy to be teaching the same subjects as last year except for one minor change. I teach 11^th and 12^th grade English and Chris teaches 8^th grade chemistry and 9^th grade math (instead of 10^th grade biology). He’s excited about math since Peace Corps trained him to teach in that subject and he enjoys it more than biology.  Another welcome change is less classes and less overcrowding, both due to the new secondary school in our village. We’re hoping this weeds out the kids who only want to “brincar” (to play around) and our school regains its reputation as one of the best in the country.

Aside from running and teaching, there have been a few other positive events that have brought us to the upswing. Mapinhane is lively with teachers and students and although the privacy during the summer vacation was nice, it’s even nicer to feel part of a community again. Our new site mate, Karina, is settling into her new life. We’ve enjoyed helping when she needs it and having another American just around the corner.  I got to see one of my favorite Americans, TJ, after a 2 month hiatus due to our South Africa trip and her visit back in the states. It was an exciting reunion with beef tacos (a rarity here) and a swim in the ocean.  Then back at home, we received a very special Peace Corps guest.  The director for all PC countries in the African continent made a visit to Mozambique and we were lucky enough to have him check out our humble abode in Mapinhane. He came with our Country Director (the head of PC Mozambique) and we showed them our school and house and chatted about our experiences. It was encouraging to meet someone so high on the PC ladder who was genuinely interested in what we were doing and open to our opinions. And today, I’m writing this blog during the conclusion of the kicker of positive events, and one of the main reasons for my rejuvenation. We just finished our Mid-Service Conference, where my training group shared successes and plans for the next year. It was the first time all members of Moz 17 had been together in over a year, and man did it feel good! Everyone is more cool, calm and collected and we’ve finally all seemed to find our way in Mozambique. Not only did we have an awesome time hanging out together which included dinners out and voting on group superlatives, but I gained some solid ideas for what I want to accomplish this year. I’m getting my plans together for my girl’s empowerment group, English theater crew, and children’s book readings. And I’ve got to get a move on because if you can believe it, I’ve only got 10 months left in country and that finish line doesn’t look very far at all.

Mid-Service Vay-cay

With over 2 months free for summer vacation between the first and second school year, many a PC education volunteer plans a trip. The halfway mark is a great time to get out of dodge, a time to recharge before starting the second and final year strong. A good amount actually head back to the US for a few weeks to spend the holidays with loved ones and take in all the comforts of being home.  Chris and I initially thought we would do this as well, but after looking at the cost of a plane ticket and taking into account that our families are spread all over the country (making it very difficult to see everyone anyway) we decided to hold off until our permanent return home. Also, we’re lucky enough to be seeing both of our families this next year during planned visits and trips. And besides, we wanted to take advantage of our close proximity to a country that seems so far and exotic when you’re in the US, but is just over the border from here. South Africa would be a place much harder to get to once we get back and would also provide plenty of opportunities to indulge in the many luxuries not found in Mapinhane. In fact, all of those things I noted in my last blog that I was hoping to encounter, we found and enjoyed! The last Twilight (hold your judgment on my movie choice, please) was seen in a real movie theater while eating M&Ms, a Big Mac never tasted so good and I actually still know how to use a blow dryer! But we had so many more exciting adventures than just sitting in steady streams of air conditioning and wandering around seemingly never-ending shopping malls.

The trip began with a 5 day jaunt in Mozambique’s capital city, Maputo. It’s not the best city in the world but it’s certainly grown on me tremendously since that initial touchdown from Philadelphia 15 months ago. We’ve been there a handful of times over the last year, usually for a Peace Corps conference which doesn’t give us a lot of time to leisurely explore so it was nice to be there on our own schedule. We needed to go to the city to catch the bus into South Africa to start the first leg of our journey, but decided to go early so that we could attend the swear-in ceremony of the new group of volunteers we met in Namaacha a couple of months back. It was a proud moment seeing Moz 19 take their oath of service, both because I was happy to have helped them reach this occasion by being a part of their training, and to think of how far I’ve come since sitting in their seats a year before. Aside from the swear-in, our vacation started off right with good food and accommodations graciously provided by a couple we met earlier this year who works for at the American Embassy in Maputo. We enjoyed family dinners and chats in the living room after they’d come home from work, which gave us a sense of the home we could have been feeling if we did make the trip back to the US. After 5 days of great “family time”, we boarded the bus to Nelspruit, where we were picked up to begin our 3 day safari in Kruger National Park. We figured we might as well check out one of the most popular game parks in the world if we were in the neighborhood. I mean, what’s a trip to South Africa if you don’t see some elephants and lions? And oh did we! During the first evening of our arrival, we got a little too close for comfort on the night drive.  Our guide drove down a small, but steep hill on an unpaved road to shine a light on 4 of the most sought after creatures to spot, lions. They were chilling about 30 feet from us with only a little shrubbery between us. Wondering why they seemed not to notice us, I asked the guide what it is they see when they look at our safari vehicle. He explained that they can only see the silhouette of the jeep, which looks like a large but non-threatening animal to them if anything. Waving a hand or other body part out of the car could draw attention. Ok, that made sense so I was very careful not to move much since I was sitting on the side closest to these kitties. We started to reverse up the hill when one of the wheels stopped moving. Our two guides initially tried to solve the issue while staying in the jeep but we weren’t going anywhere. So, they ended up jumping down to investigate and found a piece of wire fence stuck in the wheel. Uhhhhhh, didn’t they just say we shouldn’t break our silhouette? And isn’t it pitch black so we can’t see anything? Awesome. We all nervously laughed and joked in the car as the guide would periodically move his flashlight from the wheel they were fixing to the lions just to make sure they weren’t getting hungry for unsuspecting tourists. After what felt like forever but was probably only a few minutes, the wire was removed and we were on our way as I was left with the realization that this sure isn’t like a zoo! But not all game drives are that exciting, in fact the can be quite tedious because of the fact you’re not in a zoo with animals in a confined area. These animals are roaming around a gigantic park and so sometimes you can drive for hours without seeing much of anything. But throughout our numerous drives and walks we were pretty happy with the amount of classic safari animals we saw. Other than lions, we spotted elephants, zebras and giraffes, yaks and monkeys, hippos and a rhino, and animals I don’t even know the name to.  So we definitely got our safari fill, then moved on to our next part of the trip, the city with the best reputation on the planet, Cape Town. Seriously. Any time I mentioned we were going to visit to someone who had already been there, they would rave about how wonderful it is. Even before I came to live in Africa, I heard nothing but overwhelming praise about this magical city. Well, we’re definitely part of the chorus now. This place did not disappoint. Everything you hear about how it’s one of the few places that perfectly mixes a big city with natural beauty is so true. Our home base for our 8-day stay was a lovely guesthouse right in the center of town. The place converted 3 classic Victorian homes for a cozy yet modern feel with great personal service and a delicious breakfast included each morning. Not to mention the beautiful and comfortable rooms with all the amenities which we enjoyed to the fullest. I could even walk barefoot without fear of stepping on a cockroach, a welcome change from my daily life! But enough writing the brochure for the hotel. Let’s talk about all the fun activities! We climbed up the city’s landmark, Table Mountain, a steep climb but well worth the good workout and awesome view from the top, and rode the cable car down. We took a ferry ride to Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was incarcerated. We went on a tour around the Cape of Good Hope, a beautiful area near the bottom of the African continent. On our way, we stopped to see numerous breathtaking beaches and even one filled with penguins. We later relaxed on one of those beaches and learned that the icy arctic water they have makes for quite a stinging sensation on your skin. The water is much colder than our Indian Ocean beaches, but it was still beautiful none the less. On more than one occasion, we walked around areas densely populated with a selection of great restaurants and a variety of places to shop, like the V&A Waterfront and Long Street. Speaking of which, the food exploration was all part of the fun too, as Cape Town is known for its high quality options. Aside from good Italian food and sushi, we frequently found ourselves in well stocked grocery stores to ogle at goodies we haven’t seen in a while. And I already mentioned going to a movie theater, eating American fast food and using modern appliances. Of course it can be fun to check out these things in any city you visit, but as deprived Peace Corps Volunteers, these were some of the main attractions of our trip. Another highlight was that we got to share many of these experiences with our fellow volunteers. A few were vacationing in Cape Town the same time we were there, and so it was a nice change of pace to enjoy time with them in a backdrop of a developed city. When it was time to leave the place that became Chris’ “favorite city on earth”, we were glad to know we had one more adventure left before heading home. A 26 hour train ride to Johannesburg with a lounge, dining car and our own sleeping compartment! It would have been much faster and cheaper to take a plane, but we thought it would be a unique experience to take a sleeper train across Africa. Well, a unique experience it was, but not as expected. The train departed 2 hours late, the air conditioner was not working as we rode through the desert (which led all the available ice to melt), there was barely enough food to go around and the staff was all but incompetent. Long story short, we encountered mishap after mishap from the beginning until the end of the trip. So much in fact, that when we arrived to Johannesburg, the customer service manager was waiting to tell all passengers we would receive almost 50% of our money back.  Some of you may have seen my Facebook pictures where I called it the “Hell Train” and maybe that was US standards Laurie coming out. I mean, it was still somewhat enjoyable since it was our first fancy sleeper train experience. And really, how much can I complain considering my current living conditions :)?  But we paid a pretty penny for a more luxury train experience that was anything but, so it was still a bit of a disappointment. Anyway, we did gather lots of good laughs from the experience which kept us busy while waiting for 12 hours in the bus station to get our ride back to Maputo. Our journey back to Mapinhane was thankfully, pretty uneventful. After we reached Maputo, we decided to stay for a couple more days to enjoy one more jaunt in a city, then caught the early bus back home to the bush.

The long rides home gave me time to think about how things would be when I returned. I worried all this first world pampering would make it hard to go back to bucket baths and dinner by lantern light. Surprisingly, getting right back into the swing of things was not hard at all. In fact, after being reminded of pre-Peace Corps life, it made me appreciate my home here even more. I’ll have the rest of my life to treat myself to all those things I experienced during my mid-service vacation but the way we live now is truly special. If you had told me I would live without modern comforts for so long, I probably would have told you I couldn’t do it.  But we’ve done it for over a year, and will do it for another and somehow, we make it work. And actually enjoy it.

While I appreciate my life back here, that doesn’t mean it can’t be boring. As we hang out in quiet Mapinhane, I am reminded of when we first got to site last year and no one was around. Students and teachers have left for the summer so it’s pretty dead here. But, we’re also enjoying the solitude and privacy, something we don’t get much of when school is in session and students are constantly stopping by.  We had a low-key Christmas in Vilankulo with some of the new volunteers in our area and will probably ring in the New Year around here (and celebrate Chris’ December 28^th birthday somewhere in between!). After that, mid-January will come before we know it and our second year as teachers will begin.

We want to wish everyone happy holidays and a healthy, happy new year.  As great as it was to visit South Africa, it’s nice to know that next year we’ll get to spend these festive times at home :) Fica Bem Amigos!