Tom e Jerry

We have two ducks at our house and their names are Tom and Jerry.

This is Tom and Jerry:

Left to right: Jerry (female duck) and Tom (male duck).

But this is not a post about Tom and Jerry, the ducks.

This is a post about the Grupo de Tom e Jerry, my Portuguese língua group for the first four weeks of training and some of the most special people I’ve met in Mozambique.

We did our first Language Proficiency Interview (LPI) when we arrived in Maputo for orientation. We took turns speaking one-on-one with a professor for about 20 minutes (or as long as we could last). When I sat for mine, my professor greeted me and asked me how I was and what my job would be with the Peace Corps. He then asked me to describe my family back home in the United States, talk about what I like to do in my free time, and share stories about different places I’ve traveled to in my life. I successfully answered the “how are you” question and then I tapped out; for the rest of our time together, I stammered some Spanish words and apologized a lot. I felt embarrassed during and terrible afterwards.

The purpose of this interview was to measure our level of Portuguese upon entering training and more or less to confirm that the box we checked in a survey over the summer (beginner!) was not a gross underestimate or overestimate of our language skills. Based on the results of these interviews, we were divided into small groups for Portuguese classes.

We learned our groups upon our arrival in the training village: I was with Cat, Maya, and Noah, and our professor, or LCF (Language and Cross-Cultural Facilitator), was named Nércio. We briefly gathered to introduce ourselves and organize a schedule for the next month. Language classes take place at our homestay houses, so we decided we would spend the first week at my house, then Noah’s, then Maya’s, and then Cat’s.

The next morning as I was having breakfast, Nércio knocked on my door, armed with a whiteboard and a stack of books. He was 20 minutes early for our 7:30 start time, but insisted I take my time eating breakfast as he arranged the chairs in our dining room for class. I quickly chugged my scalding tea and helped move the furniture. I would’ve made awkward small talk, but I didn’t yet know how.

The others arrived and we began class as we would begin every class, by singing the Mozambican national anthem. We did not happen to know the Mozambican national anthem, but we stood with our arms at our sides and stumbled through the lyrics in our língua book, trying to stick to the tune that Nércio played from his phone. After that, Nércio hung a papel gigante of the Portuguese alphabet on my dining room wall, and we practiced reciting it. We learned why “ç” exists and how to pronounce words with “nh” and “guei” and “ão” in them. We talked about peanut butter and tea and bread and firefighters, for some reason. We went over the basic verb conjugations with chamar-se and were told to write 10 sentences using each conjugation for homework. We named our WhatsApp group after the two ducks who live in my yard. We didn’t speak any English.

As we discovered that first day, the results of our LPIs were remarkably accurate: Cat, Maya, Noah, and I all came into our small group with truly the very same level of Portuguese. We all had backgrounds in Spanish from high school or college but were by no means fluent, and we had done minimal self-study over the summer to prepare for training. Our apprehensions about vocabulary acquisition and memorizing new verb endings were similar, too. Partly because of this and partly because of the nature of our personalities and learning styles, we hit it off with a fun, vulnerable, and strong rapport right from the start. We were all excited to learn and excited to learn together. Dictionaries, their pages dog-eared, would fly across the table, and important grammar rules scribbled in notebooks became communal during and after class. We were enthusiastic and never competitive, which was perhaps the most valuable part of our learning atmosphere. We understood from the beginning that after training ends, everyone is going off on their own to work and teach and learn and live, and each of us will be personally accountable for our level of Portuguese every day in every interaction we have. In a little over a month, we will be multiple provinces (and multiple days’ trips) away from nearly everyone in our cohort, so it doesn’t matter who masters the subjunctive mood first or who can recite every preposition. To compete against other volunteers working towards the same goal robs everyone of the opportunity to have each other as a wealth of resources and a support system. And guess what we learned to be true here in Mozambique, just like everywhere else in the world? Working together and lifting one another up is a beautiful, productive way to foster growth and progress.

A typical sight during a break in língua: books and papers haphazardly overlapping, lots of notes on the whiteboard and in our books, and of course, cookies. 

Another key component in our group dynamic was our ability to laugh—at ourselves, or with one another, but never at one another. When we were all on a different key singing the national anthem, we’d try to wait until the end of the song, and then we’d burst out laughing. One day we were practicing numbers and went around in a circle saying what time it was on Nércio’s watch and we kept mixing up 14 and 40, and it was hilarious to us all. If Maya correctly guessed a hard word we hadn’t yet learned, she’d break into a very subtle, very joyous celebratory dance in her chair and it’d crack us all up. When we learned the parts of the body, we split into pairs to draw half of a person on a big sheet of paper, and then we taped the two together. When Cat and I stepped back to look at our drawing, we laughed until we had tears in our eyes. It was terrible. When we combined them together, it was even funnier.

Our beautiful, accurate depiction of the human body.

The word for the pronoun “I” in Portuguese is “eu,” and it is sort of pronounced like “yo” in Spanish, but sort of not. All of us—but particularly Noah and I—struggled with the pronunciation at first (I’m still never confident with it) and Nércio would semi-teasingly, semi-sincerely correct us every time we mispronounced it. It became a bit of a game that is still going on, much to the confusion of anyone outside of our group who happens to catch it: whenever one of us says “eu,” someone else will repeat “eu” right back (whether it is initially said correctly or not, it doesn’t matter), and then we’ll both giggle. One morning early on, we discussed the concept of “mano” and “mana” here in Mozambique, which are endearing terms of respect either placed in front of your name or used in place of your name all together. In my family, I am “Mana Sarah” or “Mana,” but never just Sarah. It is generally used by someone younger speaking to someone older, but sometimes it goes both directions. Nércio asked us if we had an equivalent in the United States, and we couldn’t come up with anything. He pushed us, asking if any of us had younger siblings. Noah has a younger brother. “When your brother addresses you, does he just say Noah, or does he add another word, like Mano Noah?” A perfect setup. “Estúpido Noah?” Noah replied. Nércio was bent over laughing for a good three minutes, and all of us joined along.

Nércio excelled at building off of our high, positive energy, and was oftentimes the first to get us laughing at the start of class with a funny story about his childhood or by recounting an adventure with his family from the weekend. He’d join in the silliness at times, but he always knew when to rein us in and focus us with content and structure. We were all able to thrive in this upbeat, fast-paced learning environment. Even on days when my brain just wouldn’t process Portuguese or I felt confused or overwhelmed or frustrated with my own learning, this group kept me positive and kept me laughing.

Our training manual breaks down the division of time for our three months here in the training village. These hours get shifted a bit based on changes in schedule week to week, but the goal is for us to sit for at least 134 hours of Portuguese classes. Most of those hours happen in the first month, when language acquisition is most critical. Occasionally we will have informal língua in bigger groups at the Hub where we play games with other members of our language level, but the majority of the time we have língua at our homestay houses. We sit in the dining room or the living room or out back in the yard or right on the front porch with a small whiteboard, lots of books, and lots of determination. It feels and looks like Chidi’s ethics lessons in The Good Place: we huddle with our friends in makeshift classrooms in our homes for hours on end, taking copious notes and throwing endless questions at our overqualified professors. Instead of moral philosophy, it’s survival Portuguese, and instead of the Soul Squad, we are Tom e Jerry.

(A word about our talented professors. All of the LCFs have impressive resumes—most have multiple degrees from Mozambique’s top universities, are scholars of Portuguese, English, and other languages, and have worked either as college professors, high school teachers, or translators and interpreters for big companies or government organizations. They are all fluent in English but pretend not to be. Some will occasionally drop an English word in class if it expedites specific understanding, but others never break. I’ve never heard Nércio speak a word of English.)

Formal língua is supplemented with activities, trips, and events (giving the Language and Cross-Cultural Facilitators the “C” in LCF) here in the village and around the province. Way back during our second week here, we made our triumphant return to the capital city of Maputo and this time we didn’t just stay in a hotel. Cat, Maya, Noah, and I walked a step behind Nércio as he took us on a whirlwind tour of the city. We learned how to ride a machibombo (a Greyhound-sized bus that acts like a public transport in any major city), how to ride a chapa (a much smaller van-sized bus that somehow fits roughly as many people as a Greyhound-sized bus), how bargain for a bacela, or a little bonus, at the market, and how to order a meal at a restaurant. We visited Maputo’s Railway Museum, explored an 18th-century fort-turned museum near the water, bought capulanas (colorful local fabric used for clothes, towels, tablecloths, and anything else) at a big, beautiful shop, walked through the Botanical Garden that was packed with wedding parties, stopped for photos with the giant statue of Mozambique’s first president, Samora Machel, on the Independence Plaza, and met up with the whole group of trainees on the sidewalk outside of the Catholic Cathedral. We had so much fun, we laughed a lot, and at every turn—just like everywhere in Mozambique—we were confronted with the legacy of colonialism.

Following our leader, crossing multiple lanes of traffic.

An art piece at an exhibit inside Fortaleza de Maputo. See more from the artist here.

Cat and Nércio pose with Samora Machel.

Our crew waiting for lunch at an Indian restaurant.

The following week, we partook in a long-standing training tradition: a full day of cross-cultural cooking with our families. Because we were studying at Maya’s house that week, her family hosted our exchange of Mozambican and American meals. The mães (well, my mãe, Cat’s mãe, Maya’s mãe, Noah’s pai, Nércio, and the TEFL technical trainer, Reis) taught us how to ralar côco (grate coconut), pilar e peneirar amendoim (grind and sift peanuts), matar e depenar frango (kill and de-feather a chicken), acender carvão (light a charcoal fire), descanscar e cortar mboa, ou folhas de aboboreira (peel and cut mboa, or pumpkin leaves), and fazer xima (make xima, a flour + water concoction often used in place of rice with the consistency of overcooked mashed potatoes and the taste of, well, flour mixed with water (I’ll continue to try, but so far, I just can’t get on board)). In return, we shared the important American tradition of eating breakfast at random times of the day by preparing pancakes, hashbrowns, and scrambled eggs with vegetables.

Cat, master of hashbrowns.

Me, master of egg scrambling.

Maya, master of crushed peanut sifting, pauses in the shade.

Noah, master of chicken prep, protects our food from bugs.

Nércio, master of Portuguese turned master of pancakes.

It was an excellent day. Noah killed the chicken, Cat helped him remove the feathers and clean it out, and Maya and I reflected on our vegetarianism while cutting veggies at a safe distance. The mães gently chastised us women for not automatically sitting sidesaddle when we sat down to grate coconut, we all laughed when Noah’s pai told him he needed to be stronger at crushing peanuts like he had been the other day, and Nércio quickly got on board with pancake prep and took over the pouring and flipping responsibilities. After hours of cooking, we sat down for an absurdly large and delicious lunch and then cleaned the dozens of plates and cups and pans used to make the day a success. We worked well and ate well as a big, loud, fun team.

Noah and his pai, Maya and her mãe, Nércio, Cat and her mãe, and me with my mãe after a long, hot, beautiful day.

In place of afternoon tutoring, where we work one-on-one with an LCF (different from our own) to practice Portuguese speaking and grammar, every Thursday or Friday we have Ngoma Time, another opportunity for cross-cultural exchange. Each week, three or four língua groups present an element of American culture to the LCFs and training staff, other PCTs, and visiting guests or mães. Usually a local group (a band, a dance team, a poet, etc.) or the LCFs or a group of mães share a piece of Mozambican culture in return. Nércio informed us that we would be the first group to go. What could we do? We heard another group was planning to host a rock-paper-scissors tournament, and we knew we had to beat that. We sat around brainstorming for a while and reflecting on how little we share in common, culturally, though we are all Americans; Cat is from Arizona, Maya is from Florida, Noah is from California, and I am from Massachusetts. We started with the basics: apple pie, Uncle Sam, baseball. After exploring a few avenues—Is it too hackneyed to do The Electric Slide? Should we even touch politics?—we decided to stick with the basics. Apple pie and Uncle Sam are not the most interactive, but we could do baseball.

We split up our roles: Noah would pitch, I’d coach the batters, Cat would organize the infield and outfield, and Maya would work the crowd selling peanuts and getting the wave going. We all had baseball caps, but lacked the three essential components of a successful baseball game: a ball, a bat, and bases. Luckily, Peace Corps is all about improvisation and ingenuity with limited materials. Frisbees and hats served as bases, we found a large stick with even weight for a bat, and I made a surprisingly bouncy and effective ball out of a ball of twine, a bandana, and five hair ties. We messed around with it for a few minutes and it started to come undone, but then Noah suggested we wrap it in clear packing tape we found at the Hub. We took another practice swing and the ball soared. It was perfect.

I am still very proud of this accomplishment.

We got up at Ngoma Time and spent a few minutes stumbling through an explanation of the rules of baseball (this was early on, and our Portuguese was still pretty rough), but then we gave up and just said, “Vamos jogar!” (Let’s play!) We grabbed some trainees and LCFs and scattered onto our makeshift field. Maya organized the crowd and quickly got a chorus of Take Me Out to the Ballgame going. Noah set out the bases and Cat got the outfield in position. The first batter, LCF Ernesto, stepped up to the plate and I realized I didn’t have the vocabulary for swing, get your back elbow up, choke up on the bat, or any of the essential baseball batter terms. I could ask if he was right-handed or left-handed and demonstrate a stance, though, and in my back pocket I had my mother’s classic piece of advice from her years of coaching me in softball: swing level, as if the bat is sliding across a table. Como uma mesa. Noah did a crazy wind-up, Ernesto made contact, he was safe at first, and the crowd went wild. We played for a few more batters, and then our time was up and we moved on to the rock-paper-scissors tournament (which ended up being awesome as well). We felt on top of the world.

Baseball caps, a bat, and a ball. Uncle Sam would be proud.

During Week 4 of training, there is another LPI to measure our growth and to ensure we are on track to meet the minimum language level needed in order to swear in. Growth measurement and accountability is all well and good, but the downside to this LPI is that after we are all re-evaluated, the language groups get reshuffled. We were nervous. The morning of the LPI, we sat in Cat’s house practicing responding to interview-style questions. As we wrapped up, Nércio gave us a speech about how proud he was of all of us, and he thanked us for being such a fun, hardworking group. He reminded us that even if we get split up, we’ll always have this special little community; we’ll always have Tom e Jerry.

I was very pleased with how my LPI went. This time around, I was able to hold an actual conversation, speak about the past in grammatically correct sentences, and even be self-deprecating when I had trouble saying certain things (YOU try explaining what you studied at NYU Gallatin in Portuguese). In less than a month, I had gone from one-word responses to relatively complex, thoughtful sentences. To my excitement and surprise, I scored Intermediate-Mid, the minimum needed by Week 13.

The Language and Cross-Cultural Coordinator (LCC) posted our new language groups on the wall of the Hub two days later. We all flocked to the papers like middle schoolers crowding around an audition callback list on a bulletin board in a Disney movie. Nércio would now be working with the most advanced group, our three fluent Portuguese speakers. Noah and I were together in a new group with a new LCF. Cat and Maya were together in a different group with a different LCF. Tom went one way, and Jerry went the other.

Our new groups are FINE. Never the same, but fine.

But just as Nércio said, we do still have Tom e Jerry. We go for long walks to the market together and vent about our problems or share funny stories from our families and our new língua groups. We eat lunch together in the middle of long training days and get a beer every now and then on the weekends. A few weeks ago, all of the trainees and training staff hiked to Tres Fronteiras, the point where the borders of Mozambique, Eswatini, and South Africa meet. We made sure to get a photo with Nércio before we hiked back down. We find excuses to work together in big groups and shout REUNIÃO! (reunion!) once we all arrive. Our WhatsApp group is still as active as ever.

On top of a mountain overlooking three international borders, still laughing.

We reunited to serve as clean-up crew after a long morning of cooking at the Hub in celebration of Teacher Appreciation Day a few weekends ago.

I’ve made excellent friends here in PST. I’m sure as the solitary years of service go on, some long-distance friendships may drift apart while others may grow stronger. But the Grupo de Tom e Jerry? We’re in it for the long haul.

As for the real Tom and Jerry—the ducks, that is: they started laying eggs a few weeks after our language groups were reshuffled, and my mãe says six ducklings are set to hatch just before we finish training and head to our permanent sites.

There’s a metaphor in there somewhere, to be sure.