Boa tarde! I promised a picture-heavy post, and here it is! These pictures are higher quality than those that I’ve posted before, so you can click on them to get a better look.
Here’s my house!
You walk into a little veranda/sunroom, which I use as my kitchen because it has a sink. The door in the second picture is just out of frame to the left in the first picture. Walking through that door, you find one big room with a table and a bed, and around the corner to the left is my bathroom. I think my house is the perfect size for one person. I’m very happy with my quirky little house, it’s really starting to feel like home.
Here are some random shots of Nicoadala scenery that I took while out and about. Nicoadala is very flat. On the one-hour car ride to Quelimane, you can spend 55 minutes looking out the window at rice paddies that stretch as far as the eye can see. They are particularly beautiful at sunset, when the water in the fields reflects the orange sky.
These photos are from a huge field behind a neighborhood called Borore. People from Nicoadala call it Bonito Borore – Beautiful Borore. Those rusted shells that used to be cars are from the war. I’m not sure if that means the independence war or the civil war, though.
Here is the Escola Secundária Geral de Nicoadala – the Nicoadala Secondary School, where I teach. This school is larger than the ones at most volunteer sites. The previous volunteer noted that approximately 6,000 people attend this school, split between morning, afternoon, and night classes. Morning classes are grades 11 and 12, afternoon is 8-10, and night is for anyone who can’t attend school at the normal hours. My classes typically range from 50-90 students.
I was thrown a bit of a curveball as far as teaching goes. As of now, I only teach TICs (Tecnologias de Informação e Comunicacão, meaning, essentially, computer class) for one half of 11th grade. I am a little disappointed to not be teaching math or physics, but I’m here to help my school, and I’m happy to do that in any way that I can. Computer class brings some unique challenges – one half to two thirds of my students have never used a computer, and as of now, we don’t have access to any at the school. The past two weeks, I’ve been drawing computer screens on the board for my students to copy.
Here are two examples of classrooms at my school. Lots of seating, plenty of light, a functional chalkboard – not that far from an American classroom, in my opinion!
Even with all this seating, classes feel crowded, and students are sometimes forced to sit on the ground by the lack of space. I haven’t received any complaints from students about this, however, and I find these rooms to be a pleasant space for teachers and students alike.
Animals of Nicoadala. The smallest lizard. The smallest dog. The biggest snail. An impromptu dog meeting right outside my house, which caused me much confusion on the way to school. PCV Sarah suggested that the dogs may have been “contesting the results of the previous night’s poker game,” which made me very happy.
Carnaval in Quelimane! I don’t have many pictures from this, but Carnaval recently happened in Quelimane, which apparently hosts the largest Carnaval celebration in all of Mozambique. There was dancing, singing, billiards, drinking, street food, and good times all around. A very memorable experience, which will be commemorated by my very cool mask.
WARNING ONE: There is a graphic picture of a boiled cow’s head near the end of this post.
WARNING TWO: The rest of this blog post will be about food.
I am eating well here. We begin with a picture of a côco lanho, or a fresh coconut. During my time in Namaaacha, I desperately wanted to try one of these, but I could only ever find dried coconuts. Those are good, but their flesh is tough and there they don’t have much sweet coconut water inside.
A côco lanho, on the other hand, has delicate flesh, easily separated from the husk with the deft maneuvering of a huge knife, executed by the vendor of your coconut. One côco cost ten meticais. For that price, the vendor slices off the top of your côco, and then waits and watches as you drink the water – they are full to the brim of sweet, slightly salty water. You then hand it back to them, and they knock on it with their knife until it splits in two. They separate the flesh from the husk, hand everything back to you, and leave to start the whole process again. They are one of my favorite snacks.
My FAVORITE snack, however, is this stuff. I don’t know what it’s called, but I know that it’s made from sugar and grated, toasted coconut. PCV Abby and I call these nature valley bars, because they look like nature valley bars. They are so good. I buy one every time I see them.
MY SITE HAS DOUGHNUTS.
Doughnuts hold a very special place in my heart. As a kid, my Mom would sometimes treat me and my sister to a dozen doughnuts from Dunkin’ Doughnuts, which always felt very special. I never had a favorite type of doughnut, but I loved choosing between all of the different flavors to fill the box. They’d go stale after approximately 15 minutes in that box, but that was easily solved with a little time in the microwave.
In college, I lived 4 minutes away from “Ly’s Doughnuts,” a local doughnut shop that was open 24 hours. Sometimes, if you came really late at night, you would have to ring the doorbell to be let in. Ly himself would wake up, open the door, and serve you, often tossing in free doughnut holes or even whole doughnuts with your order. Or sometimes he would keep sleeping. We never blamed him for this. They had the best apple fritters in the world. Senior year, Ly sold the place to a local doughnut chain. I felt legitimately sad and mourned the loss for a long time. I hope that Ly is enjoying his retirement and catching up on sleep.
Doughnuts, to me, are quintessentially American, and they make me feel close to home every time I eat one. These doughnuts are a little breadier than they are at Dunkin’ or Ly’s, but for five mets, I can’t complain. Someday, I want to make a glaze for these bad boys. More to come on that in the future.
Speaking of quintessentially American, Quelimane is known for its hot dogs. They are fantastic. A huge, pillowy bun filled with two (two!) sausages and crispy-fried onion bits, topped with mayo and ketchup, for 100 mets. Add a fried egg and cheese for 20 more. Cold beer available. End of description.
These photos are from a New Year’s party that I was invited to. I was very grateful to have been invited, as I had just arrived at site and didn’t really know anyone. My neighbor, Olga, invited me to ring in the new year with her and her friends in the neighborhood. This was my first exposure to a genuine Mozambican party, and I am sorry to say that I was not prepared.
I showed up at about 15:00, because I wanted to help prepare. The women of the neighborhood had already been cooking for a couple of hours. We cooked non-stop for hours more. Beans, rice, xima de milho (corn xima), xima de mandioca (xima made from dried, grated mandioca root), veggies, fried potatoes, chicken, cow head, salad, and I’m sure some more stuff that I’m forgetting. There was lots of down time while things boiled, during which we snacked and chatted. People began to show up around 19:00, when the sun set.
The time between 19:00 and 00:00 was filled with… drinking. Drinking, listening to music that was too loud to enjoy, and dancing. To be honest, I was hungry and tired, and found it rather unpleasant. Next time I’m invited to a party, I’ll be prepared. We didn’t eat until after midnight, when we set off Roman candles, giving every dog in the neighborhood panic attacks (it was tough to watch).
We finally dug into a buffet-style dinner, which tasted incredible after so many hours of eating only light snacks. The chicken, marinated in coconut milk and grilled in a traditional Zambézian style, was the best dish.
That night, after finishing my huge plate of food, I learned a new Portuguese word, one which doesn’t have an American translation: amanhacer. The best translation is “to dawn,” but it’s used in a way that English speakers never use “dawn.” When Olga said to me “nós vamos amanhacer” (“we will dawn,” roughly), I had to ask her to explain. She meant that they were going to stay up all night, until dawn.
I wasn’t prepared for that. I thanked her for the food, told her I had a great time, and went home. I fell asleep immediately.
The aforementioned cow’s head, also served at the New Year’s party. As far as I can tell, the cooking process went (like this:
– Pour boiling water over the head and let it sit
– Take it out of the water and lay it on a used rice sack
– Hack at it, randomly, with a machete. Take full swings, lifting the knife above your head and bringing it down as if you were going to smash a bug with a shoe.
– Turn the head over. Hack at it more (at this point, describing this process to PCV Cat, they asked “what is… the goal?”).
– Boil the hacked head and chunks for many hours.
I am ashamed to report that I was asleep by the time the head was served, so I cannot report on how it tasted. I truly hope to have the opportunity to try it sometime.
This is my setup when I cook on carvão, or charcoal. Charcoal is hard to light, but it gets impressively hot once it’s caught. In the future, I hope to do a detailed post about cooking on my charcoal stove.
These Maracujá, or passion fruit, cost me 30 mets. They were fantastic.
Finally, here are some things that I’ve made. The first picture is an example of what my pantry looks like when it’s well stocked.
The empanadas, made by my site mate Tom and I, were stuffed with sautéed veggies. They were incredible with a little hot sauce.
The pasta is homemade, served with garlicky “olive oil.” No one here uses real olive oil, because it’s too expensive. Instead, they use “Boa Mesa” brand oil, which I believe is just olive oil mixed with soybean or vegetable oil. It’s adequate! I love making pasta from scratch, so I made this on one of my first nights in Nicoadala to prove to myself that it was possible.
The beans are pictured because they are the best beans I’ve ever made. I call all of these stewy bean dishes served over rice “Feijoada,” though real feijoada has meat in it. Either way, these dishes are very common here. Feijoada doesn’t have an exact English translation, but in my head I always translate it to “bean mess” because it makes me laugh. So, enjoy this picture of the best bean mess I’ve ever made.
Wow, that was a long one! I’ll spare you a long conclusion – thanks for reading and look forward to more posts in the future! I’m not the biggest fan of posting photos so it was hard to motivate myself to write this one. I’ve got some cool plans for some upcoming posts, though. Stay tuned.
Até mais logo!
Cole's Correspondence 