Food

Food has for sure been the big theame in my life over the past week and a half. Last week i went into the out house to find two chickens sitting in the corner. I knew that they were going to be killed for eating probably that day. i had been told by Peace Corps that we were all recomended to learn how to kill a chicken. I suspected this was my day. However, Nothing happened. And the next day the two chickens were still in the out house. i thought it was a little strange to have to do my businesss in front of an animal I would eventualy kill. But there was not much choice. Later in the day one of my other coleagues said that there was also a chicken waiting for her to kill it but that her family was waiting for the weekend. I then realized that Peace Corps had asked all the families to teach us all how to kill chickens this weekend. But the very next day (Thurseday) the mother of my house came walking out of the kitchen with a knife and a bucket of hot watter. I asked her what she was doing. She said she was going to kill the chickens. At this point I realized that I almost missed my oportunity. So I asked if I could help and learn how to kill a chicken. She asked me if I was scared and I said no. So we went outside and took the chickens out of the out house. She killed the first one and showed me how to do it. Then it was my turn. I was a little nervious  but I felt that it was somthing I should know how to do and that since I have been a meat eater all my life I should experience the process of killing an animal that I would eat. So I knelt down next to the chicken and asked myself one last time if I thought that this was an ok thing to do. Is there a concious complex life inside there? Was my vegetarian father, high school teachers and friends right? Nope, I looked at that thing in the eyes as it dumbly sat there and randomly jutted its head around and realized that there really was not a whole lot going on in there. So I grabbed it by the wingsand placed them under my left foot. I pulled out its legs and held them down with my right foot, I streched out its kneck with my left hand and I sawed its kneck off with a very blunt serated knife with my right hand. Then I waited for the pulsing to stop and that was that. Not going to lie, it was pretty grose. But my only regret is that I wish I had a sharp knife to use. That would have been better, but thats just no how they do it in Mozambique (pernouncee as I recently found out , Mozambikeee)

I got sick last weekend. There has been a cold that has been going around the peace corps trainees. I spent the whole weekend on the front porch of my house studying verb congigations for a test that was on monday, and watching the local kids run around yelling randomly and getting very dirty and then getting my newly hand washed pants very dirty by huging my legs. (not cool, it takes a very long time for me to hand wash a pair of pants) But in the end I got a good score on my test which has ben a great relief for me as i really weant to become very good at portugese and language learning has been a big chalenge for me in the past. I cant even spell in english.

On tuesday my language group and I (4 people total) made a mexican/american meal for each of out home stay mothers. We made guacamole (its avacado season now) Pico de gallo, pinto beans and fried green pepers with onions. it was soooooooo good to eat guacomole again. our house mothers tought us how to plucj and gut a chicken after one of my coleages had his first oportunity killing a chicken (he had some difficulty at first so his homestay mothergrabed his hand and killed the chicken with him)

On Thursday and friday All 29 PC trainees learned how to do permagardening (permanent gardening) whcich is a techneaque used to create high producing vegtables gardens in small areas. It was origonaly designed for people living with HIV/AIDs so they could have a strong healthy diet easily accesable to them. The gist of it is that you dig very deep and fill in the land with soft soil mixed with compost so you can plant lots of plants closer together and you can reenergise the land with the compost over and over again to the soil never gets depleated. This was a lot of fun. I really enjoied the oportunity to get outside and do some gardening work. 

My Host family calls me Irmao Jack but they say it so fast it sounds like "Man Jack"

From May 30^th to June 12^th 2011. I have experienced a lot. I had my last gelada in Phoenix. It was not great quality but it was hazelnut gelada and that was good. I met up with my group of Peace Corps volunteers headed to Mozambique. (Mos. 16) We had a quick intro to Peace Corps. We got vaccines (except for me because I already was vaccinated for yellow fever from when I went to South Africa. I took a quick trip to the liberty bell and the outside of Independence hall, got some sushi and had some last microbrews and American food with the other volunteers.

Then I woke up at 2:00 in the morning to get on a bus to JFK and fly 15 hours to Johannesburg. I got to see all of Manhattan at night and that was really cool and then we drove right across the city at 5 in the morning when no one was around. The flight to Job burg was relatively boring except for when we landed and someone played Toto “Africa”. That was awesome. I was really excited to be back in Africa and see all the South African stuff in the airport. It was very nostalgic. Then I got in the plane to Maputo for the hour flight. I was so anxious that thistles hour was almost painful. Then we flew past Maputo and it was solo beautiful. It is a city perched on a little peninsula separating a bay from the ocean. Thins but the city is on the north side, its smaller, it’s always sunny and it’s in Africa.

For the next couple days my colleagues and I got more intros into Peace Corps and more info about Mozambique and more shots. We then got some info about what life would be like for the following 10 weeks of training. We also are lots of good food and drank lots of good mango juice. We were in the hotel the whole time so we never got to see Maputo.

Last Sunday I met my host Family. I am in a town in the mountains about an hour and a half drive inland from Maputo. It is called Nemaha. I and all the other trainees are staying with host families as we are trying to learn as much Portuguese as possible. My host family consists of a 26 year old father 19 year old mother 2 and a do year old doubter and a 15 year old sister of the father. They are all very nice and funny and they enjoy my company even more than I enjoy theirs (at least I think so).

Every day I wake up at 5:30 in the morning (with the sun) I take a bucket shower and eat a simple breakfast of fresh baked bread (really good bread in this town) peanut butter, and tea. Then I have a Portuguese class with 3 other volunteers and one teacher. This is from 7:30 to 9:30. From 10 to noon I have some sort of introduction to some form of PC activity or health info session. Then I go back to my house for lunch (lunch and dinner are either pasta with a little tomato and onion or rice with a chicken stew with a little tomato and onion and sometimes green pepper, all with a grape Fanta and an orange, its orange season right now). Then I go back for some PC lessons or cultural event until 4 or 5. Then I do some homework at home and talk with my family and take another bucket bath until 8 when I eat dinner and then I go directly to bed at 9 or 9:30 because I am so tired and then I do it all over again. This weekend I went to Maputo to buy a cell phone. That was cool Maputo is a lot safer than Durban and prettier to so it  has been a welcome relief to my fears of spending time in a city where I have to be worried about getting stabbed. I got Chinese food with some colleges at the Chinese cultural center in Maputo. It was nice to eat lots of vegetables.

Today I did a lot of our door work for a hospital and for my house it was nice to do that I like out dory gardening work a lot. (Sorry about spelling and stuff imp in a rush)