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| My host family's house |
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| Salvador and Jaquen helping themselves to my stuff. |
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| My host sisters Olinda and Samaria |
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| Jaquen and Salvador being dorks. |
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| Mamá, Papá and Salvador |
I lived with a family of Mozambiquians with which I came to
be good friends. When I arrived in Namaacha, we were led to the basketball
court at the IFP where all the host mothers were singing, in a chorus, a song
in Changana the melody was striking, haunting and beautiful at the same time-
it’s the same kind of thing you’d hear at a Mozambiquian
lobolo or wedding. We were then set loose to find our host families
that were holding up pieces of paper with our names on them. I can’t forget the
look of dismay on the other trainees’ faces (mine prolly included, lol); I
think reality had set in, just then that we had made our first step into the
next 2 years of our lives. My host father (Manuel Mumguambe ~
Papá*) was there to meet me. He greeted
me “
meu filho” (my son- the title
that I maintain to this day when my host family calls).
I climbed into a car- which my
papá drove- and we rode down the bumpy
street (first to pick up some live chickens from in back of the catholic
church) to my
bairo (neighborhood)
called
Villa Pouca which can be
described as
“lᆔ in
relation to
the other
bairos. We got out of the car, unpacked
my luggage, brought out some plastic lawn chairs and set them up under a tree.
I showed my new family the pictures I had brought with me, showing them aspects
of my life in the US. They looked at the snowmobiling pictures for a long time.
I was then given a flash Portuguese vocabulary lesson and introduced to my
siblings and
Mamá*: the oldest
daughter, Nelia (21), the middle sister, Olinda (19), and her son Jaquen (3),
the youngest daughter, Samaria (14), the youngest brother, Salvador (7) and the
oldest brother, Fanicio (19). Nelia was around sporadically when
Mamá and Papá were away to house sit.
Olinda, who still gives me the typical
Mozambiquian “hello, how are you? Oh, good! Bye now!” phone call, liked to cook
food and always smiled when I said that it was delicious. Samaria liked late
night dancing to the music that the next door
barraca blasted almost 24/7. Salvador liked going into my room
(sometimes without my permission) and picking up foreign oddities, like my
headlamp, guitar and the stuffed wizard that a friend made for me. Jaquen liked
to call me “malliquilão”, a three-year-old’s interpretation of
mano nicolão*. My host family was
instrumental in my PST mostly because they taught me about how things are done
in Mozambique. They taught me by example about culture, common practices and
gave me strategies for how to survive here (communication in Portuguese, cooking,
cleaning, bathing, social conventions, etc.). I felt like a child when I was in
Namaacha- cared for and looked after more than a 25-year-old should be, but,
being as I was their 4
th PCT, they gave me enough space and leniency
to fumble around lighting the
carvão(charcoal)
to cook
, and washing clothes by hand;
it just goes to show the prodigious example of Mozambiquian hospitality. My
host family still calls me periodically to check up to see how I like my new
site. I can’t wait to visit Namaacha once again to visit them.
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| My host siblings |
*-side note on familial titles in Mozambique: the words
Papá, Mamá, mano/a, irmã(o) are used as
indicators of status in family as well as titles used within the community
meaning “dad”, “mom”, “oldest brother/sister” and “brother/sister”
respectively. If I see an older woman in the street and wanted to say hi, I
could say “ bom dia, mamá” which is different from the US, in which “mother” or
“mom” is reserved for one’s own mommy. This threw me off for the longest time;
I faltered to call another man my “father” and cringed when he called me his “son”
but I eventually got over it.The sense of community here is incredible- neighborhoods
aren’t a series of houses as much as they are a network of buildings in which
one family lives. There’s never a
fofoca (gossip)
that no one knows about and there’s never a lack of someone to confide in here.
People go out of their way to make you feel welcome and loved.
†-lá- literally, a demonstrative meaning
(over there) but frequently used with emphasis on the vowel to convey the fact
that a place is far away or, in this case, very remote~ PCVs here in Mozambique
use this term A LOT. This is probably my favorite expression in Mozambiquian Portuguese,
because in order to explain where something is, it suffices to point in the
general direction and say “lá”. :P
