Settling In Diaries, Part One: Quickly

I accidentally left my fan on oscillating mode but I know if I move from my bed to switch it to stationary I’ll start to sweat again. So I lie there, as still as can be, slowly breathing in when the quick hot air hits me and exhaling longingly when the fan turns to the other side of the room. With each oscillation it seems to take incrementally longer for the breeze to return to me, but I’m sure that’s only in my head. It is a little before noon and 97 degrees. Friday, January 3rd, 2020.

I feel patterned movement on my bed. My phone is buzzing. It’s Sérgio, my Program Manager. I’ve been awaiting his call—we were told to expect someone from the programming team to call us within our first ten days alone at site. This is the first in a series of scheduled checkins; there will be more phone calls and in-person visits sprinkled throughout the next two years.

I gather the strength to sit up in bed, crawl out from under my mosquito net, unplug my fan, and walk into the kitchen as I answer the phone. As Sérgio and I exchange how-are-yous and happy-new-years, I start pacing around the square room, from the door to the stove to the fridge, again and again. I look down at the ground and see a series of small dots a darker shade of gray than the smooth but uneven concrete floor by which they are offset tracing my path. I glance up to find the source: my right elbow, bent and holding the phone to my ear, is steadily collecting a pool of warm sweat in its crease, and, at an alarming rate, one by one each droplet makes its plunge to the floor below when the time comes to make room for the next bead cascading down my arm.

I know why he’s calling, but he opens with an explanation anyway. He wants to know how the first few days have gone, how my house is, and how I’m settling into my community. I notice something on my left calf as he’s speaking. I’m batting about .200 when it comes to guessing whether that’s a fly that’s landed on my leg or it’s sweat dripping from my knee to my ankle. It’s usually sweat, but these days I find myself hoping for a fly, if only to have a brief respite from the constant physical reminder of how hot I am. This time it is a fly, and I reach down to shoo it away with my free hand. As I lean forward, the sweat that had made its way from my forehead down to my neck quickly kicks into reverse and scurries to the tip of my downward facing chin, then shoots off onto my toes. I grab a towel and wipe down my arms and my face and then keep it in my hand, knowing it’ll be needed again and again throughout the course of our phone call.

Now, perhaps you weren’t expecting to read detailed descriptions of my sweat when you decided to peruse the old blog here today, dear visitor. Some would say it’s too much. But guess what—I wasn’t expecting to SWEAT THIS MUCH. So it looks like we both received a disgusting surprise. Are you aware of how much sweat the human forearm can produce in a matter of seconds? Alright, enough for now. I’ll trust that the image has been sufficiently painted and that as you read on about my conversation with Sérgio and all of the fun tales I recount to him, you’ll picture me—Sarah, your friend—absolutely covered in upsetting amounts of pure perspiration. (For the forearm thing? The answer is: a whole lot.)

He didn’t really need to say much before I was off and running, jumping at the chance to have a two-sided, in depth conversation in English. (Typing out my thoughts in text or exchanging voice messages with my friends doesn’t feel quite the same.) I told him the story of my site drop-off adventure with the stops for buckets and soup along the way, and I briefly mentioned the window repair (sparing him the metaphor). Then I told him what happened next.

After the window debacle and my subsequent two hour nap, I woke up to a very quiet, very hot room. I still felt sleepy as I checked the time and sat up and stretched. I suddenly felt very alone. I was in a brand new place full of strangers and I had met exactly two people. I was on the verge of being very overwhelmed, really almost there, when I heard a familiar voice from outside my window.

“Mana Sarah?”

It was Junior, one half of the sum total of my acquaintances. I hopped out of bed and walked outside and suddenly I was no longer alone.

Junior was standing there with his mother and Jacob’s wife, Mana Guida, alongside three groups of people: a small group of teenage boys (presumably some of Junior’s friends), a group of teenage girls, and a big crew of very young kids. Everyone turned to look at me as I stepped in a sleepy haze out of my house. They were all smiling.

Mana Guida explained that everyone had heard I had arrived and wanted to meet me. Some names and familial relations got thrown at me, but very few of them stuck—I’ve since nailed down many, but not all—and then she asked me what my plan was for the evening. Plan? I thought to myself. I could not have less of a plan. “I might try to walk to the market?” I announced to the assembly of maybe neighbors and maybe cousins.

This was the correct answer to her question. Flip flops were shuffled on, two of the smallest children took my hands, and Junior led the crowd out to the main road. We acquired a few more young kids along the path, and I felt a new sort of overwhelmed—but a good overwhelmed. Voices from every direction pointed things out to me as we walked. “This is the police station!” “I live over there!” “That’s the ATM that doesn’t work!” It was late in the afternoon and the sun was already beginning to set, but I tried to start forming a mental map of the identified landmarks. We had only made it as far as the Posto Administrativo building (city hall is way too strong of a translation, but think: small scale city hall) when Junior ran into another group of friends and our journey took a pause. I fielded some questions from the group, which had grown to at least 20 young people at this point.

“The United States.”

“Two years.”

“English, at the secondary school.”

“How old do you think I am?”

“No, I didn’t understand what you just said in Changana.”

I was then hit a few times with the biggest question, the question that has been asked of me at least once every day since my arrival: “Do you know Mana Rachel?”

Rachel (Mozambican pronunciation: Rah-shell) was the first and only other Peace Corps Volunteer in my site, serving as a math teacher from 2016 to 2018. By all accounts she was beloved by the community, and I am grateful for that—people seem to be very receptive to the idea of my being here simply because she left behind a positive reputation. I connected with her after site announcements in October and she has been an incredible resource each step along the way, providing me with names of helpful people in the community and explaining some situations I may encounter in my first few weeks. In a lot of ways, whenever I meet a new person or make a new connection, I feel like I am discovering pieces of a puzzle that she had started designing, I will continue putting together, and the next volunteer will reshape, and so on and so on—perhaps a puzzle that is never meant to be completed, but molded and remolded again and again as time and experience and understanding march on.

I have since learned that the answer to the question, “Do you know Mana Rachel?” should be no. Because even though, yes, I know her a little bit now, the answer to all of the follow-up questions is always no: Are you from the same city? Are you her sister? Did she tell you to come here? (One day later that first week, a four-year-old girl who lives next door shyly asked me, “Do you and Mana Rachel have the same mom?” While this is arguably a rather ridiculous question, she’s four and it melted my heart. “No,” I explained patiently. “We are from different places and we have different moms.”) On my first day I hadn’t yet decided how I would handle that question, so I landed on a strong maybe, dealt with the follow-ups, and the majority of the crowd came to accept that I knew of her, but we didn’t seem to be that close.

Dusk was hastening and I really did want to get to the market before everyone went home for the night—I didn’t have any way to cook food, and I was hoping to buy a jar of peanut butter to at least get me through one day as I didn’t want to presume my landlord’s family would feed me indefinitely—so I asked the two teenage girls closest to me if they’d keep walking and show me the way. They eagerly agreed, and split off from the big group. Four of the little ones started to follow us, but they decided to change course and remained at the Posto Administrativo. So as the sun continued to set and the temperature finally began to cool, Marlene and Jenifa, an 8th grader and a 9th grader, led me further down the main road towards the market.

We had to stop at one point to let this crowd pass.

Marlene was doing most of the talking, calmly pointing out different stands at the market (almost all of which were closed for the night) and noting paths that led to the soccer field and the restaurant and the hospital. I tried a few times to engage Jenifa, but she would just smile and nod when I talked to her. After one final attempt, Marlene politely said to me, “She doesn’t speak Portuguese.” Oh. “Only Changana, then?” I asked, because the two of them had been chatting up a storm earlier. “No, she’s from South Africa, so she speaks Swati,” Marlene explained. Swati is one of South Africa’s 11 official languages, and alongside English, it is the most widely spoken language in Eswatini. Because it has Bantu roots, it is close enough to Changana that they were able to hold a conversation, sort of like when many of us first arrived, we could manage a conversation in Portuguese with Spanish. It gets the job done. However, their conversation skills were much stronger.

But—South Africa. An important detail. I leaned over and asked, “Jenifa, do you speak English?” Her face lit up. “Yes!” We had unlocked something special: for the next hour as we walked around town, we chatted in four different languages like some sort of I Love Lucy bit. I spoke to Jenifa in English and to Marlene in Portuguese, Marlene spoke to me in Portuguese and to Jenifa in Changana, and Jenifa spoke to Marlene in Swati and to me in English. Around and around we went, until it was almost too dark to see. They walked me back home, I thanked them for the tour, and then I poked my head in my landlord’s house and was invited inside for a giant, delicious dinner. I hadn’t managed to find peanut butter.

After a lovely dinner and a bit of get to know you conversation with Professor Jacob—he is originally from way up north in the country, but settled here after attending university in Maputo. He has been the high school’s only English teacher for many years, and while he loves his job, the workload has become almost too much. Last year the school added an 11th grade, and this year they are adding a 12th. Each grade has at least 4 sections of 50-60 students each (11th and 12th are smaller, but will quickly grow because the school serves a wide population), and almost all of those sections meet for English class more than once a week. That’s…a lot, so he expressed how he’s looking forward to splitting some of the work for the first time. Also, no, I don’t know Mana Rachel—I retired to my house for the night. To aid with your visualization, my house is no more than ten feet from their house. We share a yard, a water spigot, and an outdoor casa de banho, a small little structure with one door leading to the family’s toilet and bathing area, and one door leading to mine. So I made the four-second trip back to my house, went inside my room, and was alone again.

And alone again for only a minute. I looked at my phone for the first time in a few hours and saw a one line text from Elo, a fellow volunteer who was still en route to his faraway site and overnighting in his province’s capital city.

“How did site delivery go?”

Oh, oh, oh. I thought to myself. Oh, we’re going to be so fine.

I told him about the winding road getting here and the nap and the teens and getting fed by my landlords, and he told me about arriving in the capital and the heat and meeting some volunteers from other cohorts. And then he wrote what I’m declaring to be the wisest message anyone has ever sent over WhatsApp:

“This week is going to be rough I feel. We might not eat enough. We might be hungry. But we gotta stick it out and keep our heads up. There’s food out there somewhere and once we’re well fed and clean and our house is in order the world is gonna look a lot brighter.”

We’re going to be so fine.

I found water to take a bath in the casa de banho and went to sleep for my first night alone in my new home. And I slept more soundly than I had in a long while, because Junior and Mana Guida and Marlene and Jenifa and Professor Jacob and 20 kids and Elo had revealed to me that day that I wouldn’t ever have to worry about really being alone.

The casa de banho. Mine is the open door on the right. That’s a cashew tree and sugar cane growing behind it.

“That sounds like a great first day,” Sergio said. (Remember Sérgio? I’m still sweating and talking to Sérgio.) I had stopped my pacing and was standing in the doorway, running my sandal along the hinge of the red metal grate on the outside of my wooden door. I moved on to review the next day’s events.

I woke up to the beating sunrise and the sounds of roosters and goats, feeling refreshed. I unlocked my wooden door and my red metal grate and made my way to the casa de banho, took a bath, and got dressed for the day. Mana Guida saw me walking back to my house and pulled me inside for a full breakfast: two fried eggs, potatoes dressed with salt and Benny’s (powdered chicken stock), bread and butter, sliced tomatoes and onions and cucumbers dripping with oil and a dash of vinegar, and tea with milk and sugar. I expressed my gratitude, and then expressed my desire to hunt down peanut butter so that I wouldn’t be a burden. She rejected the idea that her feeding me was anything less than a pleasure, and gave me some info on the peanut butter. She told me to head to “O Valdeen” (The Valdeen) and had Junior take me outside and lead the way.

We walked behind my house towards a path I hadn’t noticed the day before. It stretched back past a few homes, then curved up to the left, out towards the main road. A yellow and pink concrete building along the road came into view. Junior asked if I could make it there and back. I said I think I could, and I headed up to explore O Valdeen. There were actually two buildings: one, a small distribution center of sorts filled with stacked palettes of Mozambique’s beer labels: 2M, Txilar, Laurentina Preta, Dourada, Manica, and others. (It should be noted that I do not claim in any way to be a local beer expert and had to text fellow volunteer Cole for help making that list.) The smaller building was a little barraca, and I knew I had a better chance of finding peanut butter there.

(What is a barraca? I just went into my PST notebook to see how Nércio defined barraca in our língua class because I was sure we’d discussed the different names for stores one day many months ago. I stand by the hasty translation I scribbled down in class on September 12th: “barraca = corner store but with beer?” It can be a bit of a catchall term for a place that sells non-produce items like sugar, canned beans, dish soap, and matches, but it can also be a small, informal bar setting. Sometimes both. You generally do not walk inside, neither for the dish soap nor for the beer: you point to a shelf from the other side of a counter with a big window. There are probably some plastic chairs outside.)

I introduced myself to the woman behind the counter, explained that I did not know Mana Rachel, and asked if she had peanut butter. She said they had run out, but suggested I head towards the Nigerian loja on the way to the market. (My notes from September 12th are less helpful with this one: “loja = store.” You probably will walk inside, but there’s still a chance you won’t be touching items on the shelf and instead pointing and asking.) I thanked her and started to head home, but then decided to explore a bit instead. I walked to the right, away from the direction of the market and towards the direction of the high school. I had driven from the high school to my home the day before with Anabela and Miambo, so I felt somewhat confident I could retrace that path.

I succeeded at guessing the two correct turns I had to make along the 15 minute walk, and arrived at the high school. It was a Saturday during summer break, so I am not sure what I was expecting to find—I more just wanted to prove to myself that I could make the walk. I stared at the building for a few moments, and then I turned around to leave. A woman appeared from inside the closest neighboring house and called over to me, asking if I needed help. I explained that I had arrived yesterday and was just exploring town a bit. I got ahead of it this time—“I’m a new teacher at the secondary school. Remember Mana Rachel?” At this point she had made her way over to me and pointed to the primary school right across the road. She told me that the director of the primary school was there in his office, and she could introduce me if I’d like. I was hesitant at first—we had been told many times in training that these sort of introductions should be formal, and preferably done by another teacher who could explain our role well. I was in jeans and sandals, but before I knew it, the woman had walked me up to the front door and was calling the director’s name.

“Ohh, Mana Sarah!” he called out as he opened the door, smiling. “Bom dia!” He was in shorts and a t-shirt. I felt relaxed. The woman explained that she had found me staring at the secondary school and saw his car here and brought me over. “And you wanted to come introduce us? Ohh, how nice! So nice!” he exclaimed. His loud and unwaveringly upbeat voice sounded familiar, and it occurred to me that he had known my name before any introduction was made. Suddenly some puzzle pieces started falling into place: This is Mana Guida’s brother. He was at my house last night, mixed in among the neighbors and the cousins and the teens and the little ones. Rachel had definitely named him as an important contact to have. She’d called him Tio João. (Tio = uncle. We covered that on September 9th.)

The kind woman returned to her house and Director João invited me inside to his office. There was a desk with many binders and notebooks and folders stacked hastily in piles. He explained that he was organizing last year’s records and preparing for the matriculation process that would start in a few weeks. Before I could ask, he grabbed a blank student registration sheet and began explaining the process in great detail. He opened last year’s fourth grade binder and pulled out one student’s paperwork. He pointed to the basic demographic information they collect, like the child’s birthdate, neighborhood, and what their parents do for work. Then he flipped to the student’s academic record, a table with subjects and numbers. Everything filled in was handwritten in perfect, neat script. “These are standardized, so if the student moves schools, they take this sheet with them and the teachers can continue adding grades at the new school,” he explained. It was all so fascinating. I flipped through the giant fourth grade binder. There were hundreds of students. I picked up one of the notebooks. It was a Livro de Turma, something of a white whale for our cohort throughout training. We’d heard about the mysterious Livro de Turma but had never seen one, and we never received a full explanation of exactly what role the Livro de Turma plays in the classroom. All we were told was that the Livro de Turma is very, very important.

“What’s this?” I said, and Director João launched into the most thorough description in the world. The students in the turma (class section, or homeroom, for lack of a perfect translation) are listed here, with their personal info here, and courses and grades are listed here. Trimester exam grades here, final grades here. The rest of the book is broken into each day of the school year, where teachers mark attendance and write a short overview of their daily lesson plan. The director signs off on the info at the end of each week. It all began to make sense—this is a record of absolutely everything pertaining to the education of a group of 60 students for a full calendar year. I get its importance now. It just took a patient, in-depth explanation.

Director João kept pulling books and binders off of the shelves and revealing more details about how the school is run. I desperately wished I had a notebook with me to write some of this stuff down—I wasn’t expecting to have the opportunity to ask every question I’ve ever had about the Mozambican school system when I left my house looking for peanut butter. I had been there just about 45 minutes when we finally started putting records back on the shelves. He asked me how I was settling in, and I explained that I didn’t currently have a way to cook food. I had a nice gas stove waiting for me in my house, but no gas tank and seemingly no way to acquire one. I could also use a bowl and a cup and a broom and an iron and a fridge and a fan and a dozen other things, too. He told me I’d have to go to Maputo. I agreed. “I’ll introduce you to my daughter and she can take you by chapa on Monday,” he said. “You can’t go alone.” I asked his daughter’s name, and he said her name is Dúlia and that she will be starting her second year of college next month. She is studying to be a doctor. I decided to test a theory. “Do you have another daughter?” “Yes,” he said. “She’s younger, in high school. Marlene.” Puzzle piece.

My high school, from afar. Three separate buildings: in the foreground, a library that Rachel helped build, behind it, a row of three classrooms, and to the right, two classrooms and the main office.

When I made it back home Mana Guida asked, worried, if I had gotten lost walking back from O Valdeen. I explained that I hadn’t, but that I also still hadn’t acquired peanut butter. She said something about talking to Valdeen tomorrow, and pointed me in the direction of the Nigerian loja. I bought the peanut butter and walked further to the market and bought two small loaves of bread. I still ate lunch with the family but insisted I would eat dinner alone, to feel a little bit independent. The peanut butter sandwich was great.

Dinner of champion.

The hot day turned into a hot night, and I was up for 7am mass the next morning. Please, please don’t tell my grandmother or my old theology teachers but I kept up my college routine and did not attend mass regularly throughout training—my host family almost never went, and I comfortably slipped into that familiar pattern. I am determined to go to mass here at site, though. I’ve quickly learned that this is a very small, very Catholic town, and for me to be an active member of the community, I ought to be a church-goer. If nothing else, it’s an excuse to meet people and gain language skills. (And, who knows, maybe something will stick. I’ll let you know, grandma and former theology teachers.)

Mass was just under two hours and was a magical mix of Portuguese and Changana. Many of the hymns were straight Changana and the order of the mass was in Portuguese, but readings and the gospel were done first in Portuguese, then in Changana. The priest would speak a few sentences of his homily at a time, then backtrack and repeat himself in the other language. It was quite lovely to try to follow. During the announcements at the end, I was asked to get up and introduce myself. (I had an inkling this might happen and had spent a portion of the priest’s homily crafting a concise two minute introduction to my whole deal.) I was sitting up front behind Mana Guida, who is one of the two drummers in the choir of five women that sit in the front row. I rose and turned around to face a church much more packed than it was when mass started. I gave my short speech and said that I was looking forward to getting to know everyone over the course of the next two years. I closed by saying that I wouldn’t be able to translate what I’d just said into Changana, but that I would try to learn really quickly. I said thank you in both languages and shot back down into my seat. I received a smattering of generous chuckles and then applause. My heart was racing but I felt surprisingly confident.

After mass I met a ton of people and didn’t register anyone’s name except for one: Valdeen. It turns out Valdeen is a person, and everyone calls his barraca “O Valdeen” for simplicity’s sake. (“Hello, my name is Steve and this is my store, The Steve.”) I have since learned that he is almost always jumping out of the cab of a truck and holding a clipboard, and he enjoys practicing his English with me. He apologized for not having peanut butter. I forgave him.

A few hours later, back at home, someone appeared at my door. We exchanged polite pleasantries and then she asked me, “Do you know who I am?” My uncertain smile grew wider and wider until we both started laughing. “It’s okay, don’t worry, we haven’t met yet. I’m Dúlia.” Junior walked up to my door with two kids who were definitely there the first night, too: Rudy is João’s middle-school-aged son, and Odenélio is a slightly older cousin through another branch of the family. So if my landlord family is effectively my host family, we were just a bunch of cousins standing there together. We chatted for a little while and Dúlia suggested we leave on a 5am chapa for the city the next day. This sounded reasonable. We moved on to other topics, and Rudy asked me if I’d been to see the river. I said no, and we were on our way.

The river, the source of the water that I use for drinking and cooking and bathing, is no more than a five minute walk from my house, across the other side of the main road. It was gorgeous and green and at the moment we arrived, full of cows. We stayed for a while as the sun began to set, I ceremoniously touched the water with one toe, and then we wandered back to my house in a roundabout way so that I could learn more of the neighborhood. The small paths and dirt roads take lots of winding turns, and I was completely disoriented until Dúlia pointed to my house, and then asked if I’d follow her to hers. Junior and Odenélio left us and we headed for her and Rudy’s home, just two minutes away.

The river, and cows.

Their house was welcoming and warm, with pretty curtains on the windows, a photo of each child framed in the living room, and two cats sleeping under the kitchen table. I sat on the couch with Marlene as Dúlia helped their mother prepare dinner. Our attention wavered between a conversation about my experiences so far in Mozambique and a Brazilian soap opera playing on the TV. I was invited to stay for dinner, and I did. Director João arrived as we were sitting down to eat, and was thrilled to learn I had met the rest of the family. When we had finished eating, I asked about logistics for the next day. How exactly does one carry a refrigerator onto a chapa? And what should anything cost? After a lengthy discussion, it was decided that in lieu of the chapa ride, Director João would drive Dúlia and me into the city in his van and show me where to buy the things I needed, and he’d negotiate prices of the bigger items so that I didn’t get overcharged on account of my looking like a wealthy foreigner and all. (I may appear as such, but the settling in allowance Peace Corps provides is intentionally not a lot.) If I paid for gas, he’d help me with everything; he felt a responsibility to do so.

Throughout the course of the five months I’ve been here, there have been many singular moments when I’ve been dumbfounded by the level of hospitality with which I am being met. That Monday was a day full of those moments. We left at 6am and got home at 7pm, and I dropped pins on Google Maps as we drove all over the city, stopping at appliance shops and bulk food stores and an amazing hole in the wall restaurant for lunch. I managed to get everything on my list: a small fridge, a fan, a mop, a broom, an iron, some basins, a gas tank, gas, sponges, steel wool, a frying pan, a kitchen knife, a tall thermos for hot water, and 10kg of rice. I would have stood absolutely no chance finding those items on my own, and it would have been impossible to transport even some of them around the city and then the three hours home without the convenience of Director João’s car. He and Dúlia had known me for less than 48 hours and had dropped everything and dedicated an entire day to making sure I had the materials to properly settle into my home. That’s not just hospitality, I think. That’s something else.

I didn’t take any photos in the city, but snapped this one on the way back: Director João spotted someone with a flat tire on the side of the road and pulled over for twenty minutes to offer his assistance.

After not having to spend almost any money for four months, it was a tad overwhelming to drop thousands of Meticais in one day on these essentials.

At this point, I’d been on the phone with Sérgio for close to six minutes. (Can you imagine if I’d actually gone into this much detail with him?) I quickly ran down the events of the next three days: I spent New Year’s Eve alone, resting and unpacking and chatting with my parents, my sister, and my grandmother on the phone for a long time; I went to a family party on New Year’s Day and met the town’s two nuns—one from Mexico, one from Spain—who run a preschool; and then on January 2nd, Professor Jacob took me around town and introduced me to the chief of police, the mayor, the hospital staff, the chefe de bairro, and lots of neighbors. I had gotten up early that Friday morning to organize my kitchen and play hand games with the kids who live next door and was just settling in for a sweaty mid-morning nap when our phone call got underway. There, all caught up.

“Yes, it’ll be very slow,” Sérgio said. “You’ll have to be patient, because settling in will all be very slow.”

I stood up straight in my doorway and crossed my arms, wondering if he had heard a word I had said. I had just recounted a series of productive adventures to him, and each day was filled with connections I was making and lessons I was learning. Everything was moving very quickly; I had used so many action verbs.

“You can’t rush these things, so don’t worry when everything feels slow,” he reiterated.

A bit confused, I thanked him for the advice and we wrapped up our phone call. I went back into my room and turned on my fan, fixed it in a stationary position, and crawled back under my mosquito net to return to my nap, confident that another fast-paced encounter would be awaiting me when I awoke.

And from that afternoon on, the pace of my days slowed to a humid, plodding crawl. More on that next time.