On training days (which, essentially is everyday but Sunday) life in Namaacha is exhausting at best. I’m loving it, but it’s definitely not easy. I wake up between 5:45 and 6 am every morning , lay under my mosquito net (which is completely tucked into my mattress because I’m paranoid) and listen to the odd combination of rooster and Snoop/Rihanna/Justin Beiber. There is CONSTANTLY music blaring- all hours of the night. Lucky for me, people in Namaacha like the Shakira world cup song as much as I do – so no complaints there! Then, I wait for Mama Joana to knock on my door and yell “tome um bahno” which means “take a bath!” Being obedient and ready to get out of my net, I retrieve a basin from our indoor bathroom (jackpot) and take it to the kitchen where she’s heated my bath water. I take the basin back to the bathroom and stand in the bathtub for a quick bucket bath. It’s usually more than enough water – especially since hair washing here not a regular occurance. Now, I’ve lucked out with the indoor bathroom because it gets pretty chilly in the mountains of Namaacha. So when my friends are toting their basins of bathwater to their outhouses, I’m sitting pretty with my indoor tub! There’s no running water in our house, so the sink and tub don’t have water handles….just drains. I finish my bath, wrap up in my capulana (a large piece of brightly colored material that women in Mozambique use for just about everything – to have dresses made out of, to wrap and wear as a skirt/dress, to tie a baby to their back, to use as an ironing board or tablecloth. Capulanas give new meaning to the words “all purpose”), and return to my room to get dressed. Mama Joana will have set out my breakfast for me – a fried egg, fresh baked bread and peanut butter (she found out I loved peanut butter and now I have it with every meal), hot tea, and finally either salad or French fries. Quite the meal. And before I walk out the door, she stuffs a roll of cookies and a juice box in my backpack as my morning snack. Although one time, I got the remnants of my breakfast in sandwich form as my snack….bread, egg yolk (I always leave those), French fries, bread. Yummmm.
Morning class starts at 7:30, and usually we have language class until about 10 am. Our training class is broken into lots of little groups, each with an individual teacher. My group only has 5 people in it, so there is TONS of one on one attention (read: you are paying attention whether you want to or not). He teaches our lessons entirely in portuguese… in fact, he doesn’t speak English at all. But so far, so good.
After language, we go to the local escola secondaria (high school) where we have tech sessions. For me, this usually means background info on the Mozambican school system, classroom management, lesson planning, appropriate discipline methods etc. It’s a little intimidating! Schools here are very different from the ones in the states…combine that with the fact that 1. I’ve never actually taught before and 2. I will be teaching in Portugues …so its occasionally nerve racking!
Around noon, we break for lunch. I come home and eat whatever Mama Joana has prepared…usually rice and covie (greens, cocunuts and peanuts). After that, there is usually some other sort of tech session. It will be with the whole group, just the education kids, or broken down even farther to just the biology teachers (there are 12 of us). Oh and almost all of these are in Portuguese as well. Active listening ALL THE TIME. Ah!! After that, we regroup with our language classes for more tutoring in Portuguese.
Our last session usually ends at 5:30. I walk home and help Mama Joana with whatever it is she’s doing. Washing dishs or clothes on the porch, cooking dinner, etc. Then I take my evening bath and in the dining room. During this time I get a big dose of Mozambican tv which is …. Interesting? My favorites are “music box,” a show on ATP that is kind of like an MTV video countdown (but I don’t think they’re actually counting anything down lol) and “escrava isaura,” a Brazilian novella that is supposed to be set in antebellum America. Its absolutely ridiculous and fabulous. Because, after all, why wouldn’t Brazilians be the experts on the states at that time? Ha!
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