a peru says gobble gobble

Thanksgiving was a bit out of the normal, if you can only imagine. A group of 51 American Peace Corps (at the time) Trainees gathered together with our local language professors and peace corps administration to celebrate and American holiday on mocambican terra. it was amazing. We split up into groups and tackled classic American dishes. Stuffing, turkey, green bean casserole, gravy, blah, blah. My group made mashed potatoes. We dished out 25 kilograms of garlic mashed potatoes and 15 kilograms of cheesy mashed potatoes! It was glorious. The good times flowed in Namaacha that day as we laughed and enjoyed our last couple weeks in Namaacha for training. I wish I could really truly explain the feeling I had as I looked around at the group of soon to be volunteers and wondering what kind of impact we would have on our communities over the course of 2 years. That was quickly blown away though as we opened some wine and enjoyed each others company.

Vida e boa. Nao e?

Imala, Land of Machambas

Sorry for the delay in updates blog world. I have been on an Africa high, and have been enjoying the life of learning Portuguese, struggling with Makua, and working on Machambas(vegetable gardens). Let me give you a quick run down of the past month, and I will upload a photo or 2. After 10 weeks of training in Namaacha, the group formerly known as Moz 21 trainees are now called Moz 21 volunteers! It's official. I am a Peace Corps Volunteer. During week 7 we learned of where we would be serving in the country. It was an awesome experience because the language teachers drew a giant map on the ground and included the 11 provinces. We then all lined up, opened up our site placement, and walked to our site on the map. It was really cool to see everyone who would be living near me in the small village of Imala in Nampula Province or Northern Mozambique. That weekend we decided to have a competitive futesol match. I will describe the match more in detail on another blog post. I will also talk about thanksgiving, swearing in, and my move to imala!!

vida e boa! nao e?

Nothing Like the Lion King

So I have decided that Mozambique is nothing like the Lion King. The amount of chickens I have killed in order to make dinner is crazy. Today I actually held a chicken while a "Medicine Man" killed it in sacrifice for all the volunteers to have good luck. It was pretty intense. I knelt with him in front of all the new volunteers and staff as he killed the chicken and spread its blood on the tree we were gathered around. We then cooked the chicken, made some xima and ate haha.

The other day my entire lingua group, consisting of 5 of us, cooked lunch for out maes (moms). We made stuffed peppers, and they hated them haha. It was a lot of fun though. We got to learn how to cook here in Mozambique, share a great meal, and some great times between the 2 different cultures.

My family is very very awesome. My dad smuggles liquor, my mom works at the boarder of Swaziland, and my sisters all go to school.

Last weekend a group of us hiked up the mountain where the boarders of Swaziland, Africa de Sul, and Mocambique meet. It was soooo gorgeous. It took us about 5 hours round trip, but we got to just sit and stare at our new home.

Weather here is very crazy. One day it will be about 42 and sunny then the next day it will be 25 and rainy. Despite the weather changes I have yet to get sick. Keeping my fingers crossed. Last night was particularly crazy. A bunch of volunteers decided to go to Xaviers. It is a bar here in Namaacha. We had a blast. James, the bartender, actually opened up solely for us. His cousin had died that day and he said he was going to keep the bar closed all day out of respect, but he saw us come and couldnt resist opening. He loves it when the volunteers go hang there.

As of now I am just living day by day. Learning more and more Portuguese each day.

Tchau

PS. I bought a capulana today. now i just need to find a tailor to make me a tunica out of it.

Namaacha

Sorry for the delay. My internet resources have been lacking here in Namaacha Moczmbique. The past few weeks have been extremely crazy. Starting with a day in Philly, then a busride to New York, followed by a 15+ hour flight to Africa de Sul and another hour flight to Maputo. We spent a few days in Maputo learning about our future here in Mocambique. Then we had the awkward journey to Namaacha where we met our homestay families. My family is huge!!! I live with minha mae(Mama Rosa), meu pai(Adolfo), minhas 3 irmas(Angelina, Nercia, and Adorosa), and minha prima(Suzana). We have 3 dogs and 4 puppies, 8 ducks, 5 chickens, 2 cats, and a huge machamba(vegetable garden). Along with every type of fruit tree you can imagine. Including the heavenly fruit called ata.

My life consists of learning portuguese all day everyday. No one in my family speaks english. It is rough, but I cant believe how quickly I am learning portuguese. I can hold basic conversations with people, and get better everyday. I am running out of battery juice at the moment but I will share one quick story.

Next week my language group has to cook an american dish for all of our moms. There are 5 of us. So we decided to cook stuffed peppers. The word for full in portuguese is cheia. So we said we were going to make pimentos cheia. They did not understand and frantically kept correcting us to say muito pimentos which means many peppers. It took about 10 minutes to explain that we are going to fill the peppers with other food.

Tomorrow I am hiking to the borders of Swaziland, Africa de Sul, and Mocambique. I will post again soon.

Tchau

Parties and Tchaus

Today is my last full day in the US of A until December of 2015... It seems o so far away, but I know it will fly by. Yesterday my families had a going away party for me. It was so much fun to see all of my family and friends in the Chicago area. I can't believe how much support I have. My cousins and I stayed up entirely too late watching youtube videos and drinking beer while enjoying the great life in our country together. Then we woke up nice and early to grab a hugeeeee breakfast with a bunch of my family. I devoured a spinach, feta, and mushroom omelette. After I went to my cousin Jamie's engagement party. It was great to see her and my family over there as well. Tomorrow, however, I depart Chicago at 9:55 am. I will be headed for Philly. I should arrive a little after noon, and be there the following day as well. We will have a conference in the afternoon and then take a bus at 2am on the 25h up to New York. That same day we will fly out of JFK to Africa... That is a scary thought... 50 or so emotional and excited Peace Corps Volunteers on an airbus for 16 hours to South Africa where we will catch a connecting flight to Maputo, Mozambique. I am so excited, just typing this blog post is making my heart race. I hope to have some great stories and tell about some amazing people that I will meet over the next few days! I will leave you with one of the youtube videos that my cousins and I discovered last night... (Jon shared this one with us)

Weird, but oddly hilarious

2/3 of Packing Doneski

First let me explain our packing situation. We are allowed 1 carry-on, and 2 checked bags. The checked bags must not exceed 50lbs per bag. One bag we will have access to during our 10 week training period and the other bag we will not receive until we move to our job site in December. This makes packing that much more difficult. So far I have figured out my carry-on and my bag that I will have during training. I can tell you this... I am exhausted. I will tell you what is in my 1st bag, and update later.

Bag for training (38lbs) will contain

1 khaki pants

2 button downs

1 pair jeans

3 t-shirts

1 tank top

1 long sleeve shirt

1 hoodie

1 blue cargo shorts

1 khaki cargo shorts

2 athletic shorts

running shoes

sambas

toms

8 pair underwear

4 pair black ankle socks

3 pair white ankle socks

3 pair crew socks

along with the stuff in this picture... 

Underwear and Socks

So i have been struggling on what to pack for the next 27 months in Mozambique. The other soon to be volunteers and I have been questioning what is important. I have the solution. I have the answer to the infamous question, how do you pack for that long? The answer is simple. It is fundamental, and it goes back to every child's Christmas present nightmare... Underwear and Socks. That's all I'm going to bring. Well not all I am going to bring, but it sure would make this packing easier. As I sit here listening to Sail by AWOLNATION, I am going to continue to ponder my thoughts on object importance. I will report all my findings back as soon as I can comprehend my packing situation.

7 days

On The Home Stretch... or something like that

Time is ticking away. I will be on an Airbus for Africa in exactly 2 weeks 2 hours and 32 minutes. That time will go by very quickly, and to make the time seem like it is further away I have been counting down in minutes. That means I am 20,280 minutes from departing to Mozambique. When I put it that way, it seems a lot more manageable to get everything done before i leave.

The past few weeks have been great. I flew back to Tuscaloosa and spent time with family and friends. My mother had a going away party for me here in town, and it was amazing to see so many people come say farewell and good luck. I felt so much support, and it was very encouraging.

Yesterday my dad and I crushed a few buckets at the driving range, and today my mom and I are flying back to Chicago for a couple of weeks before I depart. The next 20,276 (it has been 4 minutes since I last typed the countdown) minutes of life should be amazing! I am really looking forward to some final preparations.

For everyone interested, The Auburn Plainsman will have an article about me in their weekly paper tomorrow!! Check it out! I am hoping to share some stories with the Auburn Community while I am gone. My goal is to share a little about the Mozambican life with my friends and family back here in the States.

My next couple of blog posts should begin to get more interesting. I will be sharing info on what I will be packing for the next 27 months! Honestly... who the hell knows how to pack for 2 years?!?! Well I think I should go grab some food. I will begin to update more often now that life is starting to become real.

Mozambique 101

As you can imagine, I have been reading up on Mozambique a lot the past few months. I was originally expecting to receive an invitation to French speaking Africa, but instead I opened my letter to see the name Mozambique. I was confused, and honestly did not know where exactly it was... So here is a little Mozambique history for everyone... including myself. Mozambique's population is around 24 million, and the country gained it's independence from Portugal on June 25, 1975. This was a huge day for the country, and they celebrate independence day just as we celebrate July 4th. Since then, the Country has been divided into 10 provinces (Cabo Delgado, Gaza, Inhambane, Manica, Maputo, Nampula, Niassa, Sofala, Tete, and Zambezia) and a capitol named Maputo. I will be living in one of these 10 provinces after my 10 week training. Each area of the country focuses their linguistics using many many languages. Most people of Moazambique speak more than one language. Portuguese is the national language, and the most widely spoken. It is followed by Emakhuwa, Cisena, Xichangana, Elomaie, and Cishona. These are languages native to the African area, and are molded my history. Besides language, the Portuguese had influence in religion as well. This is why 56% of Mozambicans are Christian. After that, 19% are atheist, 18% are Muslim, and 7% are some other form of religion (often time animism). Onto the most interesting piece of history in my opinion, the flag.
 
The Flag was adopted on May 1, 1983. The colors and symbols on the flag each represent an important part of the country.
Green represents the riches of the land
Black represents Africa and the people of the continent
Yellow represents the minerals that are commonly found in the soils
White represents the peace that Mozambique works towards
Red represents Mozambique's historical struggle for independence
The star represents Marxism and internationalism
The AK-47 and bayonet represent the country's defense and vigilance
The hoe represents the abundant agriculture of the country
Lastly, and most important to my mission in the peace corps is the open book. The book represents education, and it is laid open to show that the country is striving towards improving their education. It is a very important aspect of the growing economy. This is why I am going to Mozambique. I am going to teach, and it is the mission myself and all other teachers in the country to bring that book in front of the hoe and AK-47. It is our mission to make education the gold standard for the people of Mozambique.
I hope that history lesson helped describe my future home a little bit. I will be able to embellish more once I live there.

Feel free to leave comments with any questions or criticisms of my posts. I would love to compile any questions and hopefully answer them through my blog.

Am I Ready Yet? (Peace Corps Update)

By popular request, let me walk you through what my application process has been like. I submitted my application in April of 2012. I had an interview in July of 2012 during camp war eagle. After that I learned I had been nominated for some jobs in Africa. After months and months of waiting, I was given an invitation to teach in Mozambique on April 22nd of 2013. A year after submitting my application, my dream had come true. Since then I have received 10 shots, countless blood work, completed online safety courses, written and rewritten resumes, and submitted applications for a visa and government passport. I am happy to say that at the end of July I was officially granted full medical and legal clearance. It is completely official, but the work has just begun. We will fly to Philadelphia and be there for a couple days of orientation, then fly out on September 26th. Before then I must prepare myself. I have been gathering addresses, making a packing list, visiting family, putting all my music and movies on a hard drive(which I hope will be usable at my site), begun my studies in Portuguese, and overall began mentally preparing myself. We are allowed to bring 2 checked bags to Mozambique. This means 80-100lbs of stuff for 27 months in Africa. It is going to take some sacrifice. I have been communicating with a few people that will be leaving in my group, and we are all very excited. I am gathering some basic info about Mozambique that I will share with everyone in my next post. So get ready for a history and culture lesson.

Summetime Livin' (Life Update)

Let me catch you up on my life. As of right now I am living in Chicago with my family. We have been having a blast. We took a family trip up to Hayward, Wisconsin for a week. This was amazing because we used to go every single summer as a family, but when everyone gets older life has a way of changing. Our time up North consisted of fishing, board games, eating, drinking, and just an all around good time. I will share one story with you from our trip.
It was a beautiful day, so we decided to take the pontoon over to a little island about 20 minutes away. We brought sandwiches and drinks so we could make a day out of it. While over at the island, my uncle and grandmother had to take the pontoon back to pick up Aunt Nancy. Leaving my mother, Uncle Jeff, my 6 cousins, and myself behind on the island they departed with our only mode of transportation. It was really funny because we kept waving like we were stranded. It was a cool little island with a lagoon and tons of wildlife. While we were swimming and enjoying our time we noticed some dark clouds coming in. No more than 5 minutes had passed before the sky opened up with freezing rain. All of us began laughing as we realized we were a good 25 minutes or so away from being back on the pontoon. That rain was freezinggggg. My uncle returned with the pontoon and we made the trek back to the cabin in the freezing rain. It may sound like a miserable experience, but my family has an ironic and weird sense of humor. It was one of those moments that always happens to us, and we have learned to appreciate all of time together. When we got back to the cabin, naturally we all began to laugh and dry off. All in all the trip was fantastic. We only had 1 bear incident and the fish were biting every single day.
Other than that, I have been enjoying my time up in Chicago visiting family and really preparing myself for the upcoming journey to Mozambique. If you would like to hear more stories about my trip to Hayward or in Chicago, feel free to ask and I can post some more. I am trying to get a feel for what I want to write about

What will I do in Africa?

It has come to my attention that I will have to make all new relationships once I leave the US of A... Seems obvious right? Well it is hard to grasp just how drastic of a change that is until you are counting down the days before you leave the country you have grown up in. It is an exciting and nerve racking thought that can consume your mind day in and day out. How will I make new friends? How will I trust anyone I meet? How will anyone trust me? These questions have no single answer, but I have found a possible solution for all of them. The easiest way to trust people and to meet new friends is by opening up with them. I want them to know who I am and where I come from. I want to share with them my experiences and stories. I want them to know my life. This is where I can use some help from each and every one of you. I am asking upon my friends and family to send me pictures. A picture is worth a thousand words. So if I have 100 pictures, then I have 100,000 words to share with my new friends in Mozambique. This is a significant conversation starter. You can send me links to pictures on facebook, or email pictures to me nad0004@tigermail.auburn.edu . I will print these pictures and share the stories with everyone. Please send me some help in starting anew in Mozambique.

Bom Dia

I believe in Auburn and love it

This past weekend I visited Auburn for one last time. I had a good weekend full of Marco Polo, some chess, taco night, wings at halftimes, and of course dunkin donuts! It was tough moving out of my apartment and saying bye to all my friends that were still in town for the summer. I honestly probably looked like this while driving past toomers corner on my way out of town http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qS7nqwGt4-I. Im going to leave you with a few parting words from George Petrie. They are a strong set of words that can help you make decisions in your life. These words are meant for everyone. It is better known as the Auburn Creed.

I believe that this is a practical world and that I can count only on what I earn. Therefore, I believe in work, hard work.
I believe in education, which gives me the knowledge to work wisely and trains my mind and my hands to work skillfully.
I believe in honesty and truthfulness, without which I cannot win the respect and confidence of my fellow men.
I believe in a sound mind, in a sound body and a spirit that is not afraid, and in clean sports that develop these qualities.
I believe in obedience to law because it protects the rights of all.
I believe in the human touch, which cultivates sympathy with my fellow men and mutual helpfulness and brings happiness for all.
I believe in my Country, because it is a land of freedom and because it is my own home, and that I can best serve that country by "doing justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly with my God."
And because Auburn men and women believe in these things, I believe in Auburn and love it.

Mozambique, so close yet so far.

I graduated, I visited the Southern Caribbean on Carnival (all the toilets worked), I've laughed, I've cried, and I have decided I am so ready for Mozambique. These next 4 months are going to be a struggle to get through. I can enjoy every moment of the day, but in the end my mind is constantly focused on moving to Africa. I have even transferred the Lion King Soundtrack onto my I-Tunes in preparation.
For those of you who do now know, I have been accepted to the Peace Corps and will be leaving for Mozambique Africa. It is situated just north of South Africa. I have found it most helpful to tell everyone that it is across the Indian Ocean from Madagascar. This gets the location correct in most peoples minds, however it also leads them to believe I will be hanging out with some talking animals.
I am ready to finish all my tedious paperwork, medical stuff, and get on to my staging date. We will meet for staging on September 24th, leave for Africa on September 26th, and return to the USofA on December 5th of 2015. It is so far away, but I know these next few months are going to fly by as I begin to learn Portuguese. I am curious to see how my 27 months in Mozambique are.

I have become aware that another Auburn graduate from the College of Science and Mathematics has the same staging date for the same program as myself. I encourage you to follow her blog as well for the next few years. carainafrica.blogspot.com

Pura Vida