Greeting from Namaacha!

Hello! I am happy to announce that I am loving life in Namaacha.


I am currently living with a host family. I have a mother, Suzana, two brothers, Fernando and Ricardo, and one sister, Zaida. My mother is the first of two wives, so the father of my siblings is never here. It is fairly common for men to have two wives- especially in Namaacha because many of the men from the village work in the mines in South Africa. The men will have two families- one in each country!

We live in a cement house and I have my own room with electricity (aka one lightbulb and no outlets). Across from our house we have three more buildings- a kitchen, a bathroom, and a shower. Our kitchen has a "two-burner" charcoal grill that my mom does all of the cooking and baking on (she even baked a cake and biscots on it this week).


I usually wake up by 5 am (our neighbors start blasting their stereos at 5:30- so if the roosters and chickens haven't already waken me, the stereo will). Every other day I sweep and mop my room, the hallway, and the kitchen before showering. (Showering in Mozambiqur consists of filling a bucket with a mix of boiling water and regular water and pouring that over your body. I take two bucket showers a day and don't mind them at all). After my shower I eat and either go to class or to Peace Corps informational sessions. I am learning Portuguese pouco a pouco (little by little). Having a background in Spanish has made it much easier to understand Portuguese, but spekaing is a different
story!

My first week in Namaacha has been full of new experiences and adventures. On my first night with my host family, I watched my brother kill a chicken (the experience was rather gross). After watching him kill a chicken I was handed the knife and asked to kill the other one. To my surprise, I managed to gather the courage to kill the chicken with a knife no sharper than a butter knife. The job did not stop there- I also had to de-feather the chicken and slice him into pieces. My mom used every last piece of the chicken and made a braid from the intestines (the intestines were probably my dinner later that week). I also ate a chicken foot my first week in Namaacha. To be honest, I had no clue I was eating a chicken foot until I got to the toes.

I am learning tons from my family! I help my mother cook every night and have been picking up small tricks here and there. I will try to post a curry recipe soon, but translating is very difficult becuase my mother knows the names for ingredients in Shangana (the local language) and not in Portuguese. If anyone can tell me what mandioquiera is I will be one step closer to an amazing curry recipe.

The weather here is great, but very unpredictable. One day it is cold, the next day it pours, and then the day after that it is scorching hot. We are moving into the rainy season which means hot days and tons of bugs. I have made peace with the mystery bugs that hang out in my room, but the second they move from the window to the ground they are dead meat! This morning I was greeted by a lizard in the bathroom. I seriously thought about making him a house pet because lizards=less
bugs.

Please forgive any spelling errors- I am writing this blog on my phone.

PS I should have the internet on my phone for one month so I will try to post as often as possible. Sadly, the internet here is very slow so posting pictures will have to wait until I go to a city.

Ate logo (until later)!