Mãe Means Mother

My mãe was waving her phone in my face, smiling and nodding, urging me to take it.

“Alô?”

“Oh, hey, we can talk in English.”

“Oh! Okay. . . . And who is this?”

Unbeknownst to me, I was speaking with Rachel, the volunteer who moved out of my house a few weeks ago. She lived with my homestay family for her three months of training with the Moz 31 health cohort, and now she is living at site on her own.

“I want you to know that you have, hands down, the BEST homestay family in Peace Corps. I know everyone says that, but for you, it’s true,” Rachel told me over the phone. My mãe was beaming watching our conversation unfold from the other couch. “Mãe is so patient and kind and gentle,” Rachel went on. I looked at my mãe and smiled, beginning to put together the pieces that had led to this conversation: Yesterday, as we sat on the porch removing the shells from peanuts in a large basket, I watched my mãe shuffle through some papers and pull up an old PC homestay assignment sheet. She underlined a phone number and told me something about a former volunteer—I thought she was telling me that she was going to visit her at her site, or that the volunteer was coming to visit the village—I said something like, “Que bom!” and continued shelling peanuts.

But in that moment on the couch, it all made sense. My mãe had gone out of her way to facilitate a conversation with a fellow volunteer who was literally in my position, in this training, in this house, just a few weeks ago. She made it a point to spark a connection I didn’t know I had the chance to make. Rachel said this happened when she arrived, too, and she was confused at first, too. We chatted for a few minutes, and then the phone bounced around the room so that everyone could catch up. I was in awe, but as Rachel indicated, it was par for the course.

The Hub, from afar.

We arrived in our training village on Sunday morning in two chapas, like at the airport. We pulled right up to the Hub—the heart of the training center—got out, and walked into the open-air structure. All of our mães stood on the opposite side of the room, singing. After a few numbers, the mães unrolled small strips of paper. We were instructed to walk around the room, looking for the paper with our name. I scanned a few faces and papers before coming upon mine: Gilda, my mom for the next three months.

I smiled and approached her and said, “Eu sou Sarah.”

“Sarah? Sarah!”

She gave me a big hug and then immediately grabbed my left hand, our fingers interlocking. “Vamos,” she said, and I was swept away from the other volunteers and into her direct care before I could blink.

The main road in our bairro, facing NW, away from the training center and towards my house.

I exhausted 100% of my Portuguese on the walk from the Hub to our house. My name is Sarah. How are you? I am good. It is nice to meet you. Where do you live? Here? Okay. When we arrived, I met the rest of the family. I have one sister, Jú, who is two years my senior. On that first day, there were four little cousins running around, but they only happened to be visiting the day I arrived. (A few days later once my Portuguese had expanded, I learned that they actually live just down the road.) I also have a pai, but he works in Maputo and wasn’t there initially. Two days he’s here, two days he’s gone. I have a brother, as well, who is a college student in Maputo and visits on school breaks. So most of the time, it is me, Jú, and Mãe.

We had been told that our mães are encouraged to treat us like children: though we are adults and know how to eat, clean ourselves, and take care of a house, we have no idea how to eat, clean ourselves, and take care of a house in Mozambique. The first thing my mãe taught me was how to wash my hands. The kitchen sink is a double sink with a bucket in each half. We both put soap on our hands and scrubbed, using a little water from the left bucket. We rinsed in the left bucket, dipped our hands in the right one, and then dried off with a dish towel. Success! Hand washing in the kitchen follows the same rules as dish washing, which is exactly the same as Girl Scouts taught me: scrub and rinse with soapy, dirty water, and then dunk in a clean water-and-bleach mixture.

We then ate a small salad (lettuce, tomato, and slices of raw onion with oil, vinegar, and salt) in the dining room while a Portuguese-dubbed version of Mickey Mouse Club House played in the background for the kids. I shared a few Portuguese-Spanish-jibberish thoughts, but mostly just quietly ate my onions and listened to Portuguese Donald Duck. After eating, we washed our dishes (scrub, rinse, dunk) and then went into my room to begin unpacking my bags and assembling my bed. My sheets were at the very bottom of my largest backpack, so I took every other item out and put it on my table, learning lots of vocabulary along the way. (Notebook! Sweater! A bag of underwear! Sim, sim!) Mãe and Jú left me to finish unpacking, and then we ate another meal, some sort of vegetable soup. I broke the news to them that I am a vegetarian. My mãe was surprised and said that though she has hosted nine previous volunteers, she has never had a vegetarian. But I shouldn’t feel bad; she is eager to learn, just like me.

My bedroom, before I had fully unpacked (and properly unfurled my mosquito net).

I sat down to show them photos of my family and friends and immediately realized I had absolutely no family vocabulary beyond mother, father, sister, brother. I learned quickly, though. (Aunt? Uncle? Cousin’s daughter who I call cousin? Exactly who is Mina?) Mãe noticed the globe stress balls that we had at my going away party in one photo with Aunt Marie and she remembered that I had one in my big backpack. I grabbed it from my room and used it to point to Boston and New York. That afternoon, we took a quick tour of the village with the current volunteers, Jackie and Nikia, and then came back home for dinner. Before eating, I took my first bucket bath—more on that another time—and then after eating and cleaning, my mãe sat down with me on my bed to explain the morning routine.

She proposed I wake up at 6:30am, put water on to boil, and then go back to sleep for 10-15 minutes while it boils. Get back up, put some boiling water in a bucket with a little cold water (to make warm water) and then put the rest in a thermos for tea. Take a bath, get dressed, drink tea and eat bread with peanut butter or plain butter, take crackers and juice for my mid-morning snack, and then walk to the Hub for training, which begins promptly at 7:30am. With my very little Portuguese, I tried to express that I didn’t think I would have enough time to accomplish all of that in an hour on my very first day. This thought was not getting across, and she kept repeating the proposed order of events. She even wrote it down, because she was worried I was confused. Eventually I got across my concern, and we amended the plan to begin at 6am. She gave me a big hug and wished me a good night’s sleep, and I woke up a few hours later and got to boiling and bathing and bread-ing.

My morning routine, as written by Mãe at the bottom of a sheet of notes from orientation.

I have been living here six days. I speak in sentences now. I wash the dishes each night with Jú. I take a bath twice a day, when I wake up and before dinner. (It’s usually around 7:30pm when my mãe looks at me from across the room and gently says, “There’s a bucket in the bathroom that you can use to bathe.” It’s never direct, it’s always slightly indirect, which is incredibly sweet. Remember how bathing is a thing? You can do that, you know. I am still not used to showering at night so every day I need this reminder.) I watch the news and many, many soap operas after dinner. I filter my water in my bedroom and put my trash in the only trashcan, the one outside the house. I sleep under a mosquito net and take a malaria pill each night. I learn dozens of new words and ideas every day, each time I interact with someone. Everything has become so normal and so comfortable so quickly.

I expected the transition of moving into someone’s home to be much more awkward than it has been. For me, I am in a brand new country in a brand new part of the world doing things and saying things and eating things I have never experienced before. For my family, though, this is normal. They have had Peace Corps volunteers in their home fairly regularly for the past 7 or 8 years. They anticipate my problems and communicate across cultures and languages with ease. They are comfortable, so I am comfortable. They practice hospitality and community and warmth so well.

The view out the kitchen door early in the morning.

I met my pai a few days ago. I was sitting on the couch after training and a man walked in the living room and sat down next to me. I said hello and he said hello. We shook hands. He looked stern. My mother leaned in and said to him, “This is your new daughter, Sarah.” His face completely changed. “Sarah? Okay!” He shook my hand for about forty-five seconds, telling me how glad he was to meet me. He’s funny and kind and smart and never gives me a straight answer when I ask silly questions, which I appreciate. He quizzes me on vocabulary around the house and pokes fun at me when I screw up. He left for Maputo after two days and bid me farewell. I told him that when he returns, I will be fluent in Portuguese. We’ll see.

Jú loves to cook and loves to sing. She recently graduated college as an elementary school teacher, though she isn’t working in a school currently. She is a constant, bright presence around the house. She says she doesn’t know any English but there have been a few moments where she “guesses” words correctly. Jú took me to a neighbor’s house to buy phone credits and took me on an adventure to buy bread at a market and watch the sunset. She is fiercely independent and, as far as I can tell, can do everything.

I have known my mãe for less than a week but she is already one of the most important people I will meet in this life, I know it. She teaches me things without being condescending and flips through my dictionary with me when I am struggling with words. She is so, so smart and I trust her so much. We are good at small talk and joking and understanding each other even though my Portuguese proficiency is pretty low. We were watching the Pope leave Mozambique today during lunch, and she asked me what it’s like to fly. She has never been on an airplane, but pledged she will go on one when I get married. She wants me to grow, which is why she feeds me so much bread at every meal every day. We had a formal opening of training at the Hub on the second day and while we waited for a representative from the local government to show up, the mães sang songs in their seats. At one point, a few mães got up to dance and mine beelined for me across the room, took my hand, and started dancing with me. In an instant, everyone was on their feet, dancing with their mães. My mãe knows how to start a movement.

I took down Rachel’s phone number so that we could keep in touch and continue our conversation at a later date. “Please enjoy your time in training so much,” she told me before we wrapped up. “I know you just got there and you’re like, but I want to see the rest of Mozambique! I know, I know. But just enjoy these three months.” I get the sense that I will.