Here’s what happened.
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Wait wait wait, hold on. I already have to start with some background information. There are two things that are critical factors in my telling of this story: VAC and visas.
Back in November, I was elected one of my cohort’s three VAC (Volunteer Advisory Committee) representatives—I represented the Southern provinces of Maputo, Gaza, and Inhambane alongside my Central and Northern counterparts Jonė and Julia, respectively. VAC is sort of like a student council for PCVs; the committee meets three times per year with the Executive Staff of PC Mozambique to offer feedback and suggestions on policies and raise issues and concerns that volunteers are experiencing. VAC is a bridge between staff and volunteers. After we were elected and people grew a bit (lightheartedly) concerned that we would now know too much about the rules and side with staff, Cole came up with a nice turn of phrase that kept our reputation in tact: VAC isn’t a bunch of narcs; the VACs are our personal lawyers.
That’s what we thought we were signing up for when we were elected, at least. But our roles quickly turned into much larger, more involved positions than would normally be expected of VAC representatives of any other cohort. When we unexpectedly had a few extra weeks of training in Namaacha and Maputo back in November and December, VAC was called upon to organize and facilitate the scheduling and execution of those extra weeks. Because of our worries about visas (that I’ll get to in one moment), our cohort spent an unusual amount of time asking questions of staff, and VAC was pretty much constantly fielding, consolidating, and responding to questions from every direction, almost every day.
There would have eventually been other elected positions in our cohort, but we just never got there—so for all of the time we spent as volunteers, Jonė and Julia and I were the default leaders in every situation. VAC added a lot of work and stress to my everyday life as a volunteer, but I am forever grateful I was trusted with this position of leadership. Having something to do, something to organize, something to keep afloat, something to say, kept me sane and calm in times of extreme uncertainty—of which there were many—and because I didn’t end up spending much time at all as a teacher in the classroom, the work I did through VAC may very well have been the most applicable professional experience I garnered through my time in the Peace Corps. If I ever run off and be a diplomat, it’ll be because of the volume of emails and phone calls and Google forms and pages and pages of notes that made me feel like I had a purpose in moments of despair.
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| Julia (left) and Jonė (right) and I spent so many hours together both in person back in the fall and virtually over the past three months at site. Our WhatsApp group chat (“32 VACas”) never rested. We weren’t close friends before the whole VAC thing happened, but now I’m not sure there’s anyone else I trust or respect like these two brilliant, patient, funny, strong, powerful women. We took This Very Serious Photo to send to the cohort after the national VAC conference at the end of January. Somehow, we don’t have any other photos together. I thought of asking to take one in the airport in Ethiopia, but figured we could wait until DC. And then, well. We’ll get there. I’m so sad I didn’t just do it when we had that one last chance that we didn’t know was our one last chance. |
That should cover the big background stuff. Everything else, I’ll explain as we go.
Okay.
Let’s do this: here’s what happened.
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Wednesday, March 11I remember hearing once that Peace Corps is filled with days where you feel the highest of highs and the lowest of lows, and that sometimes you feel both the highest and the lowest in the same day. This day is a great example of that.
This was the day of my wonderful site visit with Sérgio. Over lunch—at the restaurant where I met the owner, a South African man named Jan—we chatted about what we thought might happen with regards to our documents, and then we moved on to talk about conferences that were being scheduled for May, August, and next January. Discussing the distant future made the issues of the present seem small and surpassable.
After he left, I spent a few hours chatting with Molly and Kathryn, my fellow Maputo Province volunteers. We were, in all honesty, the most unlikely trio of friends to be thrown together in our cohort—had we not been the small Maputo crew, the three of us probably wouldn’t have talked much, if ever. But especially in those last few weeks, we talked a lot and formed a tight support network for one another. Maputo Province was the first (and ultimately, only) province to receive site visits from our Program Managers, so on that afternoon we compared notes and traded gossip and speculated about the future for a long while. It was a good afternoon.
That night, some bigger gossip started flying around that was quickly confirmed by a country-wide email from our Country Director, Ellen: that day, the next Peace Corps cohort to Mozambique had been cancelled. This changed the tone of the day. Within moments, our cohort received a separate, more alarming email: the confrontation between renewed documents vs. being sent home—a familiar old refrain from our days in wait in November and December—was back on the table, and the next 48 hours would be critical in determining where we were headed.
All of a sudden, and after a somewhat decent stretch of calm waters, we were once again in the boat of everything almost falling apart.
I remember sitting on the floor in my kitchen with my kitten asleep in my lap when these two emails came in. I felt numb. The day had started off so wonderfully. I got to work immediately, though, because that’s all there was to do. Julia and Jonė and I collected our cohort’s frantic questions and started drafting an email response.
I really needed to plan a lesson for my 9th graders on question tags (one of those dumb British English ticks that are annoying to teach, aren’t they?), but I couldn’t focus. I kept starting, then panicking, then trying again. Then stopping.
“How the hell am I supposed to teach coherently tomorrow?” Julia texted our VAC chat.
I eventually gave up planning and decided I might as well get a little bit of sleep and wing the lesson, shouldn’t I?
I texted with a few other friends. Everyone shared varying degrees of fear. “Still in everyone’s best interest to keep us here,” Cole said. I went to sleep with this glimmer of hope in my mind.
Thursday, March 12
Julia and Jonė and I continued working on our email before school started at 6:45. Julia had room in her schedule that day, so she finished writing it as Jonė and I ran off to teach. I taught a class every period on Thursdays so I didn’t have a break, but I checked my phone in the five minute intervals between classes to continue forwarding concerns to Julia.
The question tags lesson went very well. All of my classes that day went very well. Sérgio’s site visit gave me blissful confirmation of what I had been feeling that week and the previous week: I was finally hitting my stride as an English teacher.
Not much else happened this day. We waited. We went about our lives. My neighbor kids Max and Canércio and Anasha came over to play catch with the three tennis balls I kept by my front door.
That night, Deputy Dan, the second in command on the executive team, sent out a farewell note. His term in Mozambique was officially ending the next day. This was a planned departure that we’d known about for months, as Peace Corps staff have intentionally limited time at the posts where they serve, but it was still a painful email to read, as Dan was beloved by everyone in country. Goodbyes can be so hard, can’t they?
Friday, March 13
This is actually a message Noah sent to our cohort’s group chat on Thursday, but I reread it over and over again on my walk to school Friday morning:
Alright y’all, all we can do right now is try to give some kick-ass lessons today and tomorrow. We only have a couple more guaranteed opportunities to do what we came here to do, so let’s try to make the most of it.
I am grateful for everyone in our cohort, and I learned something from everyone I met through this experience, really. But Noah? Noah is something else.
I was still feeling overwhelmingly positive at this point. It was still in everyone’s best interest to keep us around. Both of our governments agreed on that fact, and kept saying it. The idea of pulling 52 teachers out of 52 schools across the country because of a technical issue that everyone wanted resolved was just too impossible; I felt very optimistic. So I taught my lessons that day, not really considering they might be the last lessons I’d ever teach at that high school. But maybe there was an inkling of despair because I had the presence of mind to take a photo from the back of one of my classrooms during a break in the action when my students were copying a passage off the board. I never took photos at school, and as a personal rule I never took photos of children in general. But I quickly snapped this photo that doesn’t show any faces because I suppose somewhere inside of me was a tiny voice saying, “Well...what if?”
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| I taught English to my school’s two 8th grade classes and three 9th grade classes. Each 8th grade class has 80 students. Each 9th grade class has 65. This is one of the 9th grades. |
After school, I carried on with my life as usual. Some neighbor kids came over to draw. I cooked beans. I waited around as our critical 48 hours drew to a close.
Our cohort grew restless as the day pressed on without any word. We had been through this many times before, and we knew the timestamps that had to pass: what time the Mozambique Migrations office closed, what time the Maputo Peace Corps office closed, what time Peace Corps Headquarters in DC closed. We waited and waited until Zoe, who was quickly named our Shadow VAC and our Queen, cold-called Ellen at 11:15pm.
We all sat in our quiet houses scattered across the country, staring at our cohort’s group chat. Zoe frantically typed scattered details from the conversation as it happened.
Deputy Dan’s going away party was tonight.
They’re bringing us in to Maputo.
She’s sending us an email in 15.
It’s not going to have every detail.
We have to keep a professional face on.
We’re going on Monday.
Within ten minutes, we received the email that told us we would need to travel to Maputo on Monday to work on our visa renewal. Flights and travel arrangements would come out on Saturday. Our Program Managers would speak with our school directors to explain our sudden absence, which would likely last one week.
But this was the most significant line of the email: While we’re hoping this is not a farewell to your communities, you should be prepared for the possibility of not returning. We had to pack up and leave as if we were never coming back.
I immediately started pacing. My kitten walked at my side, meowing, wondering why I was up and moving this late at night. People started sending questions and worries into our group chat. I checked in with Jonė and Julia and found that they were both asleep. Numb and alone and running on autopilot, I started compiling an email with everyone’s concerns. I sent it at 1am.
I received a response fifteen minutes later, and in there was a glimmer of hope—an implication that we would probably be okay, and that packing up as if we were leaving for good was just an extreme contingency plan. I was able to breathe well enough to go to sleep, once again thinking that all was not lost, but that Saturday may very well be the longest day of my life.
Saturday, March 14
I was up before the sun. There was so much to do.
I swept and mopped my kitchen. I took a bath. I fried an egg. I made tea. I pulled a plastic chair outside onto my front step, flipped open a notebook, and started writing. I would have to have the most difficult conversation with Jacob in a few minutes, and I needed to take notes in Portuguese.
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| Some of my notes with peanuts covering up details that don’t need to be published on the internet. The spelling and grammar and making-sense-ness is horrendous to look at now. But the gist is: this is not fair for anyone involved, and I hope to God I’m not actually leaving this early into my time here because that would go against everything I said I was here to do. And if I return in a week, even the fact that I am having this conversation is unfair for everyone who has to hear it; the idea that I might just disappear out of nowhere clouds the trust and respect I’ve received from my community so far. And that loss of trust and respect is absolutely justified. |
“Is this about the broken mosquito net on the window? I can start fixing it this afternoon,” he said.
My shoulders dropped. This day was going to be so hard.
We talked for over an hour in plastic chairs under the mango tree. I hate to say that it went well, because it was a horrible conversation to have, but it went as well as a horrible conversation like that could go. At one point, he asked, “Are you sure this is about visas, and not about that virus?” What a strange thought, I remember thinking to myself. I waved him off. Nothing to do with that virus, no. I launched into the March 18 deadline and the VAC emails, assuring him this was entirely visa-related.
We discussed the logistics of the next week. I would share my lesson plans and notes with him and he would teach my classes, despite his having very few hours in the day to take over my classes. But he had to, because he is the only other English teacher for miles around. I said that I could probably still come in on Monday to teach or at least speak with my students before leaving for the city, but he said I shouldn’t try to teach because my heart wouldn’t be in the right place. He told me not to say anything at church, because the message was still unclear. If I didn’t come back, he’d prepare a speech to give the following Sunday.
But the overall tone of the conversation was: I’m going to be back in a week. Let’s figure out the logistics for an annoying week where you have to take my workload and I won’t be around. But I’ll be back. There’s a chance I won’t, but we’re both confident I’ll be back.
Once we finished, I walked over to Tio João’s house and found Marlene sitting outside with a friend. I asked if her father was around, because I was leaving for Maputo on Monday and was curious if the family would watch my cat while I was gone. She said he wasn’t but that she’d pass on the message. She assured me the cat would be welcome. I said I’d come back later to speak with him in person nonetheless.
On the walk back to my house, I happened to run into three of my favorite 8th graders: Olivia, Orlénio, and Sam.
Sam is very quiet, but he has a sharp sense of humor. He loves sports and also loves to draw. He’d often drop by my house with the neighbor kids and run around for a while before curling up on my step with the drawing notebook, skillfully designing colorful scenes in little corners of the pages. Just two weeks prior, he and Hélvio had come by my house and I hit ground balls (with a tennis ball and a broken broom) across my yard to them until it started pouring. Once it started pouring, we just played catch.
Orlénio is the youngest and shortest member of his class, and oftentimes older and taller kids would poke fun at him. But they always failed. He is unflinchingly confident, because he is smarter and more charming and well aware of both of these facts. I could always rely on him to run up to the board and fill in a sentence when no one else wanted to participate in class.
Olivia is Orlénio’s cousin who just moved to town this year. She spent the first few weeks of school trying to make friends and adjusting to her new world. I think she was drawn to me because of this—I was another new person figuring everything out. We’d chat between classes and on the walk home from school. One day recently she and and another classmate, Amélia, were walking home with me and they spent a large part of the walk whispering in Changana. When we got to the path where we usually part ways, Olivia and Amélia changed course and followed me to my house. They lingered for a moment as I walked to my front door. “So now you know where I live,” I said to Olivia. “If you ever want to come study English in the afternoons, you are more than welcome. We can schedule a time in school.” The girls nodded and ran home; this is what they were after. To me, Olivia is so obviously a natural leader. But she doesn’t know it yet; she is still new and shy. I wanted her to see it. I was so excited to spend the next two years building her confidence until she saw it.
I stopped the three of them on the path and told them I wouldn’t be in school next week, that I had to go to Maputo, and that Professor Jacob would teach my classes. Then I told them that there was a small chance I might not come back once I go to Maputo. They were stunned. “I think I’ll be able to come back, but I wanted to make sure I warned you, just in case,” I explained gently. I told them that if I didn’t come back, I’d need them to be leaders in the classroom even more than they already are, okay? And make sure everyone gets by, okay? They quietly nodded, confusingly accepting their challenge.
I still had a lot to do, so I said I needed to continue on my way. “Volta, Professora Sarah. Volta!” Olivia said as I turned to go. Return. “Hei-de tentar, Olivia,” I replied. I’ll try.
I made it back home and started drafting lesson trajectories for the next two weeks to leave with Jacob. Rumors began flying that Interrupted Service due to COVID-19 was starting to be offered to PCVs worldwide. (Interrupted Service has to be offered by Country Directors, and it means that you can prematurely but honorably end your service, citing forces outside of your control.) Julia and Jonė and I compiled some more concerns from our cohort, sent off a new email, and scheduled a follow-up phone call with Ellen for that afternoon.
I called Kátia and told her I wasn’t up for a Changana lesson that morning but that I needed to talk with her. I made my way out to her house and explained the situation. She was scared. I told her I was still very positive, which I was. We ate potatoes and drank orange juice on her floor. I hung around for a while, but eventually I had to get back to work. She walked me out to the road. I started to go, then asked if we could take a photo together. “Just...you know. In case,” I said. We both laughed at the very idea, snapped a photo, and then I hurried back home.
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| I don’t think I’ve ever smiled so big in a photograph before. But I’d bet this is how I looked when I was with Kátia all the time. We were always laughing and always smiling so big. |
I went back to organizing my classwork. I emailed Jacob an Excel spreadsheet of my grades. I gave him my lesson planning notebooks and explained what each class had due for homework in the upcoming week. I gave him the Peace Corps tote bag I’d gotten at NYU last spring. That bag held my bean bottles—I’d been using a system (passed down from PCVs of old education cohorts) of positive reinforcement with my classes. When they participate or help one another or all do their homework, etc., they earn beans. When the bean bottle is filled to the top with beans, they get a prize. Most of the classes voted on their prize being “American food,” which was intentionally left very vague so that I had months to figure out what I meant by that. But it was likely going to be snacks and candy and whatever I could get my mom to mail me. I explained the bean system in great detail to Jacob, but then laughed, saying, “They’re not going to fill the bottles this week, so you don’t really need to commit any of this to memory.”
I caught up on some VAC messages back in my house, and then a whole goat tried to break into my kitchen. This was a recurring issue and my kitten always responded in the most hilarious ways. Here are two goofy photos as a respite from this stressful blog post:
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| Goat intruder. |
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| Xipi would get stuck like this for a while after a goat came very close to him. |
Gloria first showed up at my door one Saturday asking for help with the present continuous tense. I got out my notebook and started to explain, but I could tell nothing was clicking. I started backtracking to see where a good entry point would be. Present simple? The verb “to be?” I backtracked until I found myself asking, “Do you know what the words I and you and she mean?” She said no. Okay then.
After spending extra time on Saturdays nailing down the basics that Gloria apparently never had, I began to notice her participating more in class and even offering to help her friends conjugate verbs and fill in sentences. The present continuous soon became a breeze, and she did very well on the first exam. Gloria was my early little success story. I thought there would be so many more Glorias.
She wanted to practice reading that day, so I grabbed the 9th grade textbook—none of my students had textbooks, and they only had access to old versions of the books in the library—and found a passage for her to practice reading. It was a passage about the Mozambican singer Lizha James. We worked on pronunciation for a while and then quickly reviewed question tags. It started to drizzle, and Gloria had a long walk home past the market, so we called it a day. I quickly gave her the heads up that I was going to Maputo on Monday and wouldn’t be around for classes this week, but that I’d likely be back next week. She was alarmed, but I reassured her, saying that I was confident I’d be back.
Julia and Jonė and I talked on the phone with Ellen for just under an hour. I took copious notes. COPIOUS. (Can you believe it?) While we were on the call, people started hearing about their travel details. We received a lot of information in that phone call, and I immediately got to work typing up organized notes to share with the cohort once it ended. Julia and Jonė started sending off follow-up emails to other staff members based on our conversation and what we planned for the following week.
I felt so calm after our phone call. It seemed that everything was coming to a head in a positive way, for once, and that everything with our visas would finally be resolved. I was relieved that the tone of my conversations with everyone all day was one of optimism and not of doom. No sense freaking everybody out when I’d be back in a short week. And I’d get to see all of my friends who I hadn’t seen in three months! This was not the worst.
I finished typing up my notes and sent them off to Ellen for review around 8pm. This is a formal bureaucratic step that is annoying, but required: in order to maintain a level of professionalism and trust, Ellen sometimes asks to review notes from long meetings before VAC sends them off to our full cohorts, just to confirm that points are phrased accurately and that any “off the record” information remains off the record. Because I knew I’d be seeing Ellen in person in a few days and then I’d continue to have a working relationship with her for the next two years, I was not about to go rogue and share my meeting notes without her approval.
Waiting around for more information, though, was understandably frustrating for everyone. It was getting late, and some people had to start their journey to Maputo early Sunday morning. I spent the next two hours bouncing between an email chain about logistics specifically for the South with Mary Jayne, the Director of Management and Operations, and our cohort’s group chat, which was growing increasingly (but again, understandably) tense. I noticed my kitten was meowing a lot and it occurred to me I needed to feed him, so I jumped up and ran to the kitchen to grab some fish from the fridge. I leaned down to put food in his bowl and as I stood up I almost passed out. I grabbed onto the fridge to steady myself. I realized I’d been sitting at my computer for hours, and aside from the fried egg before dawn and the potatoes and juice on Kátia’s floor, I’d been quite literally running all over town all day long on hardly any food. I took a second to try and breathe and suddenly felt so overwhelmed. But I am feeling so optimistic? And I think everything will be alright? But what if...? I didn’t want to face that. I couldn’t face that.
Ellen emailed a few minutes later, I passed on all of the information, and I texted Julia and Jonė that I needed to tap out and eat something. Julia jumped in and took the lead from me. I threw the only food I had in the fridge into a pot: an onion, two tomatoes, a carrot, and some leftover rice. It was a glorious 10pm dinner. I went to bed refreshed, hopeful, and ready for another long, difficult day.
Sunday, March 15
I made sure I was up early enough to eat breakfast before church. I knew this day would be long, but I didn’t want to do it without eating again.
I took a quick, cold bucket bath and threw on my long blue dress. I bought this dress on a lark with an LL Bean gift card last summer. I was never much of a dress or skirt person before Peace Corps, but I figured I might become one. (I did.) The style is comfortable and conservative. I wore this dress to a big family lunch outing in August before I left. At one point I got up to go to the bathroom and I passed by my grandmother, who grabbed my arm, leaned in, and said very firmly over the rim of her glasses, “I like that dress.” I thought of her and that moment every time I put it on. I wore this dress to Staging in Philadelphia, I threw it on when we first arrived in the airport in Maputo for orientation, it was what I wore to teach my first class in model school in Namaacha in training, I was wearing it the day we received our site announcements back in November, it was my dress of choice for the first day of our supervisor’s conference after Swear-In, I wore this dress to Christmas Eve mass at the Cathedral with Maggie, and I put it on the day Jacob took me around town and introduced me to my site’s community leaders. Months of hand washing had stretched the short sleeves in a way that made it hang off my shoulders a little differently every time I put it on, and there was a tiny orange stain on the back left shoulder. I liked that dress. I left it behind.
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| I also wore the dress for our first experience observing a Mozambican classroom in September. What I’m saying is, I wore this dress a lot. Here we are wearing our batas, teacher mandated lab coats. Like every other teacher at my high school, I wore my bata everyday in the classroom. |
“Ohhh, Mana Sarah,” he said in his chipper tone, “How are you? How did you sleep?”
I lied and said I slept very well, thank you.
He said he’d heard that I stopped by his house yesterday and was sorry he’d missed me. He was at the funeral for a community leader who’d died earlier that week. I said that it was no problem, but that I still wanted to speak with him at some point. We agreed to chat after mass.
I walked inside and found my usual seat at the end of the fifth bench on the left side of the church. I always had terrible posture when sitting on the small, tight benches without backs, so in recent weeks I’d been trying to consciously get myself into a comfortable position before the two-hour mass began. I watched as Tia Guida set up the lectern with the Changana bible and Marlene arranged the plastic chairs for the altar servers and a few dozen children shuffled into the first three benches on the right. I shifted in my seat, relaxed my shoulders, and for quite literally the first time in a few days, I took a single deep breath. Stillness.
My eyes immediately filled with tears.
Oh. Oh, oh no, I thought to myself. All of the what ifs and worst case scenarios and contingency plans started flooding my brain, and I was washed over with fear. What if this is the last time I sit in this seat and see these people and hear this music and say these prayers in this language? What if this time, everything really, truly falls apart? I looked around at everyone going about their normal Sunday routine, finding their familiar seats next to neighbors and sisters and friends. I saw my cousins and my students and I watched as the altar was dressed and the four-woman choir opened their hymnals to the same page and hit a perfectly harmonized, perfectly somber note. It is Lent, after all. We’re not singing happy songs.
Muscle memory took over and I rose to my feet with everyone and hit all the beats of the opening of mass, using every ounce of energy I had to not burst into a puddle of scared, desperate tears at the end of the fifth row of benches on the left.
We knelt for the Penitential Act and I prepared myself for more tears with the next part, the Changana-sung Kyrie Eleison/Lord have mercy bit. I am sincere when I say that this part of the mass, every week, taught me anew what the phrase “hauntingly beautiful” means. Slow and solemn and loud and painful, the harmonized, repeated cry of Hosi (God) made me feel—something—in church for the first time in a while. Every week. I don’t know what I felt. But don’t seek to sound hyperbolic when I say that this short, poignant refrain will live in my soul forever.
So I cried through that, and then I cried through a bunch more of mass. I kept it together for the homily, though, and especially for the short health PSA Padre Fernando busted out in the middle of a Gospel reflection. He brought up COVID-19 and said that he knew everyone was worried—it was just across the border in South Africa, after all—but that all we could do was listen to the doctors who tell us to be careful. “If the doctors say you need to wash your hands every time you move to a new room in your house?” he said loudly, grabbing everyone’s attention. “Then you wash your hands every time you move to a new room in your house, okay?” He said it in Changana, and then in Portuguese. He waited for a verbal “I understand” in both languages before moving on.
After mass, I briefly chatted with Kátia, who asked if anything had changed or if I was still going to Maputo. “Still going, still feeling positive,” I confirmed. We bid each other farewell. That was the last time I saw her.
Hélvio and Neide asked if they could come over later to toss around my frisbee. I said of course, and that I’d be doing some work around the house. But of course, come. I couldn’t find Tio João so I started walking towards his house. Marlene was there and said that I’d just missed him again, that he’d gone to a neighbor’s house for tea. We both laughed. She promised to tell him I’d stopped by.
I went back home and looked around at my house—I still hadn’t given a single thought to packing—and felt myself starting to cry again. The nagging thought that maybe everything with our visas wouldn’t be alright got lodged in my brain, and it wouldn’t go away. I did some small things within my control to get my emotions in check. I made some tea. I changed out of my dress into jeans. I fed my cat. I swept my bedroom. Then Tio João showed up at my door.
I grabbed my notes from my chat with Jacob just to have something to do with my nervous hands. João said he came back home and when Marlene said I’d stopped by again, he knew he had to come over. He sensed something was wrong. He was speaking in very low tones; this was the first time in all of my conversations with him that his voice wasn’t the most upbeat, positive voice in the entire world.
I gave him one of my chairs and I sat down on my front step. I explained everything through the tears that I couldn’t hold back anymore. I asked if he’d take the cat. He said he would. We talked for a long time. I explained that I was very, very optimistic but the toll of all of this—packing up and say goodbye just in case something terrible happens—was beginning to weigh on me, and thus the tears. But I was so hopeful, still. I was sure I’d be back in a week.
He said he’d send Marlene over in the late afternoon to pick up the cat, who’d been playing at our feet for the duration of our conversation. It’d be better to move him once the sun was setting so that he wouldn’t remember the way back home.
Many people from our cohort started traveling this day. Our group chat was fairly quiet, and Julia and Jonė and I finally didn’t have much to do. Tom e Jerry checked in with each other to see how we were managing. Molly and Kathryn and I did some more of our classic gossiping, this time about Interrupted Service rumors and what it would be like if we had to go back to the U.S. The hypothetical going home chat sort of made me feel better; talking about the worst case scenario—and confirming how much we’d hate it and how much everyone involved would lose because of it—was, unfortunately, a familiarly patterned conversation at this point. The new element at play was the growing concern that something might happen to us as a result of COVID-19. I ignored this part of the conversation; I had just enough mental energy for our usual visa stress, and I wasn’t about to add a new stressor for no good reason.
Hélvio and Neide came over right as I was starting to pack up my collection of little sentimental things in my bedroom: a bottle cap from the first beer I had in Mozambique, a list of the colors of the rainbow in Portuguese that my Namaacha cousins made, earrings I’d bought at an art fair in Maputo with Alicia in December. And all the tiny trinkets I’d brought to remind me of home: a piece of a piñata from my old summer camp job that had been the focus of my Peace Corps application essay, polaroids of friends from my going away party, a note I’d written to myself on a service trip to Belize last spring. I never let kids inside my house. This was a firm rule, just about as firm as my no-photos-of-kids rule. But everything was out the window now. I invited Hélvio and Neide inside and showed them my sentimental things stacked up in a small box. I explained that I was leaving and that I might not come back. They were very concerned. I was much better at delivering this news to kids than I was with adults, though, and I calmly reassured them that no matter what happened, we’d all be okay, okay? And I was pretty sure I’d be back.
Neide reached into my box of sentimental things and pulled out a pink bracelet that I used to wear everyday. It has a heart and says “Girl Scouts of Eastern Massachusetts”—my former employer, and the site of the piñata that, in a lot of ways, set me on this life path. “Massachusetts?!” she exclaimed, her face lighting up. I laughed. “Neide, that bracelet is yours now,” I said, beaming.
Let me explain: the first time I met Neide, I was walking by her house on my way home from the market. She introduced herself as Odenélio’s younger sister and Hélvio’s older sister and said she’d very much like to come over to my house and sing. I said that sounded wonderful. I wasn’t sure if I’d need to prepare sheet music, but I loved her confidence and her joyful energy and awaited this curious visit.
She came by a few days later when Nirma and Anasha were coloring in the neighbor kids’ notebook on my front step. She said she was here to sing, and asked if I had any books. After a brief moment of panic where I wondered if I’d been mixing up the verbs “to read” and “to sing” for five months, I grabbed one of my Portuguese picture books, A Minha Avó Foi Ao Mercado, and handed it to Neide. She read it out loud, cover to cover, using engaging voices and pointing to the colorful illustrations. Nirma and Anasha were enthralled, and so was I. I began pondering whether I could have a 12-year-old as my official counterpart for the Community Libraries Project.
“Now, we sing,” she said when she finished the story.
And then she just, sang it. She sang the whole story. She went through each page and kept a consistent beat and sang the book. We all got involved: Nirma hummed under the tune, I clapped along, and Anasha drummed crayons on the neighbor kids’ notebook. When we reached the end of the story, Neide quickly flipped back to the beginning, certain we’d skipped over some words that could be part of the song. She turned to the copyright page and began singing dates and ISBN numbers. Only one word in the entire book made her stop her beat: Massachusetts, the location of the publishing house. I broke the pronunciation down for her and explained, hey, that’s actually where I’m from! The confluence of excitement in that moment was just too much to handle that, by God, she had to sing about it. Massa-Massa-Massachusetts became our refrain, and we did the whole book over again, this time singing my state’s name a few times in between each page. It really just turned into a rushed, giggling mess where we tried to stick to the story long enough before raising our eyebrows, smiling at each other, and jumping back into the Massa-Massa-Masschuuuseeetts! chorus. This went on for a very long time, and I can easily clock that afternoon as one of the most joyful of my life.
So when Neide saw the Massachusetts bracelet, I knew immediately she had to have it.
Hélvio spotted a bag of buttons that I had used for little sewing projects around the house. I grabbed some string and brought the two of them back onto my front step. I got them started making bracelets, and soon enough Nirma and Anasha and a few other neighbor kids arrived and joined in on the fun. I left Neide in charge of the buttons and Nirma in charge of cutting string, I grabbed my speaker and hit play on There Goes Rhymin’ Simon, nodded my head to the first few beats of “Kodachrome,” and then retreated back into my house to start organizing.
I tore apart the third room of my house, sorting everything in my trunk into neat sections for medical supplies and school supplies. I folded towels in the kitchen and mopped the area near my cat’s litter box, then decided that wasn’t enough and mopped the rest of the house. My mother raised me to tidy the house before leaving on a trip; it’s always a wonderful relief to return to a clean home when you get back.
We carried on like this for many joyful hours: the kids made bracelets, I bounced between playing with them and cleaning my house, and we all listened to happy old American music. It was calm. Something I struggled with throughout my service was a cycle of growing frustrated when the neighbor kids would overstay their welcome and then getting frustrated with myself for growing frustrated with them. But this day was different; they stayed for hours and I never grew tired of their presence. It was fun and it made me grateful for the little community we had created and it made me hopeful for what our little community would continue to become.
When everyone finished, we took photos. I just wanted to take photos of the bracelets, no faces, but Betinha encouraged me to bend my rule just for this day and we took a few group shots. Looking back now, I’m very glad I did. Neide stole my phone at one point to record a video and treated us to a few bars of Massa-Massa-Massachusetts, so I’ll have that forever now, too.
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| The neighbor kids always respectfully kicked off their shoes before stepping onto my front step, even though I told them they didn’t need to. Going barefoot when entering someone’s home is a Mozambican normalcy. |
I pulled my basins out onto the front step, got some fresh water from across the yard, and gave him my sponge. Neide scrubbed and he dunked. I went back to grabbing the essentials from my shelves of clothes. Tia Guida showed up at my door, having heard that I was packing up to leave, and offered an awesome suggestion: pack one bag to take on Monday and one bag for the worst case scenario. If I ended up having to leave, she’d bring the second bag into the city for me. But no use lugging it around if I was coming back in a week. This made packing a bit easier. I split everything I was taking with me into two piles: things I definitely wanted to take back to the U.S., and things that would be nice to take back, but that I could ultimately live without if she couldn’t bring the bag to the city in time. The definitely pile was fairly small.
More hours passed. Max, my 4-year-old neighbor who only speaks Changana (and thus taught me a lot of Changana), asked to play with my tennis balls. He got a game (similar to monkey-in-the-middle, but with slightly different rules) going on the side yard with a dozen other neighbor kids. I’d blown through half a dozen Van Morrison, Colin Hay, and Vance Gilbert albums and had made a ton of progress on my house. I felt productive and peaceful and my hours of crying at church felt like they’d happened years ago. Hélvio—who is 10 years old; have I mentioned that this kid is 10 years old?—popped over from the game to ask if he could help again. I grabbed 20mts and a small canvas bag. “You know the house that sells tomatoes, near Chénia’s uncle’s place behind the energy building?” I asked. He nodded, and ran off to buy four small tomatoes and one onion. I went back to packing, relieved that I’d be able to eat dinner.
Soon after he returned, Marlene showed up asking for Xipi. The sun was starting to set. I scooped him into a basin with his favorite bottle cap, grabbed all the fish from my freezer, and walked with Marlene back to her house. We brought him inside and he excitedly started sniffing around the living room. Rudy, who’d been feeling under the weather and thus wasn’t around for the bracelet activity, appeared from his bedroom curious what my cat was doing in his living room. I explained my situation. He was stunned. I reassured him that I was feeling very optimistic. “I’ll pray for you, Mana Sarah,” he said.
I finished packing and called Jacob and Guida over to my house. “Just in case,” I explained, “I want you to know where everything is.” We agreed that this was a silly exercise, but we did it anyway. I showed them my trunk and my old soda bottles and my dishes and the clothes I was leaving behind. I had to lock the door and take the keys when I left, but I’d bring the second “worst case” bag over to their house in the morning before I got on the chapa for the city. I’d managed to do everything. I felt relieved and calm and good.
I said good night to them, I cooked dinner, I ate, and I got ready for bed. I took my malaria medication. I checked in on some VAC messages. We’d learned that Ellen was meeting that night with the leaders from all Africa Peace Corps countries. Odd for a Sunday night, but it was too late for me to start speculating and I figured I’d hear about the meeting later that week when I saw her. I talked with some friends. I was very tired.
I opened my front door to walk over to the bathroom. I stepped off my front step and, as they did every night in Mozambique, my eyes immediately jumped up to gaze at the vast, bright, gorgeous night sky full of stars. I stopped. I burst into tears.
I felt so positive. I knew we’d be okay. I knew I’d see these stars again. But the exhaustion of the past few days was starting to catch up to me, and I cried walking over to the bathroom and walking back. I lingered for a few moments, tears streaming down my face, staring up at the Southern hemisphere’s grand, beautiful constellations.
Then I laid in bed, barely keeping my eyes open, as Julia and Jonė and I texted a little bit about everything.
“I realize it’s insane to be optimistic right now,” I said.
“But sometimes ya gotta be a little insane,” Jonė replied.
I responded with a heart. I fell asleep.
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