A large sand rectangle, the backyard is demarcated by the main house, two smaller houses, a wire fence and some cement-block walls. Two university students live in the little one-room apartments: they are in and out, alternating between studying inside, visiting with friends under the largest shade tree (under which I am also sitting) and cooking over an open fire. I hear not only their conversations but also music (likely from the nearest beauty salon) and laughter, roosters' and babies' cries and cars' horns and engines. My host family's house is situated on Estrada Nacional Numero Um; the road runs the full length, 1430 miles, of the country from South to North. Its primacy speaks nothing of its conditions: its winter (75 F during the day and 55 at night) so it has been raining and the red dirt road is riddled with little canyons (holes would be an understatement) such that drivers regularly swerve onto the shoulder as a matter of courtesy to their riders.
I live with two retired teachers, Dona Madalana and Dono Meque (or “Mack” in English, which he attempts). The house is large and luxurious by Mozambican standards; I was very lucky to find a room to rent (albeit filled with Dona Madalana's clothes and other possessions) in a family home, especially one so centrally located and affordable. My host parents are very nice, willing to share and teach; they have a large extended family in the area that often drop in unannounced. Today, for instance, Madalana's daughter, son-in-law and their six month baby dropped in just to meet me. I moved in Friday morning and that night joined my host parents, their cousins, nephews and neices in watching the news, drinking wine and chatting. That first evening, Dono Meque gave me a small book he wrote on the composition of the Vacopi family (despite his proclaimed specialization in the psychology of teaching or what I assume to be pedagogy).
Indeed, my host family is Vacopi, which means they speak a minority language (phonetically “Chopi”) within the country and province. They also speak Portuguese, but they have been quick to encourage me to learn Copi words and phrases. There is no way to distinguish the physiques of those that speak Copi and Changana, the mother tongue among almost 90 percent of Gazans. But when I accompanied Dona Madalana to the Xai-Xai market on Saturday, I discovered there may be other cues. She was on a mission to buy for a cousin in the country a specific capulana, a patterned piece of cloth most women wear as skirts; some patterns can be classified as Copi and this one was particularly hard to find. The only white person in the open-air market, I attracted the attention of men and little boys, alike- the former staring from afar and greeting me as they passed, the latter swarming around to sell me plastic bags for my vegetables.
Its remarkably easy to be a pescatarian in Mozambique. Xai-Xai is a 10 minute drive from the ocean and most people don't have the money to eat meat regularly, anyway. During their winter, tomatoes, lettuce, onions and eggplant abound. A common snack is french bread with an egg or bean cakes called badjia. Back from the market, Dona Madalana and I shared my American-style salad and her delicious local leafy green vegetable dish in a coconut and peanut sauce with rice. She laughed good-naturedly when she realized that I had included in the salad carana, an arugula-like green that they do not eat raw. After I made soup today, I have to concur: carana is better cooked.
Stay tuned... my next post will address my Save the Children internship.
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