Thursday, August 4, 2011

Cultural Experiences

So a couple weeks ago I went to a sort of mozambiquan baby shower. Once a baby survives being alive for one month it is taken out of the house for the first time. Then freinds and family say some prayers and then they start chanting "The baby has nothing! Give to the babby!" and everyone places presents on the table that the baby is laying on. Then they place a blanket over the baby and everyone start throughing coins at the baby and then give larger amounts of money. I was the only white person there so a lot of people took pictures of me. Then when it was time to eat I was apart of the first group of people that got up to get food (the older men) then different groups of people went up to the table as the food became less and less. Most people just got beans and rice. (which is what I took  in the first place along with a little chicken and french fries) The young children were given a slightly fermented, sweatened corn porage. it tasts like apple sauce that tickles your toung. But it does not have any sgnificant amount of alcohol. Then it was cake time and the proud mother and father had the first peace of cake. The Father(late 40s early 50s)  was the father of my home stay father(26). The mother is another wife (between 18 and 24). I am not sure if this man has multiple wives or if one has died.
Then I got to eat cake which i was very happy about because I was very hungary,.  I did not eat much of the food because I felt bad about eating much when there were more people at the party that the food could have posibly satisfied. Then after cake I got dinner. My plate consisted of two chicken feat and chicken liver on rice. (I ended up just mashing up the chicken feat into some of the rice so it looked like I ate them. I actualy like chicken liver a lot. Then for the next few hours I danced with a lot of the children along with my homestay partents. They really like to dance and play withy kids so it was a lot of fun! Then we took a car back home and an old woman we were giving a ride to sang a bunch of traditional songs. It was very cool.

A week later I had a very different cultural experience. I few people and myself wanted to take a trip to a small shopping senter in a suberb of Maputo. The chapas that go there were telling us that they would not take us to that suburb but that they would take us to another suberb and then we could take another chapa from there, but first they wanted moe people to show up (and no one was around because it was sunday mornign). SO instead we decided that we should embark on the Peace corps Mozambique tradition of Balaying (hitchhiking). Hitchhiking is very common in Mozambvique and the only people that do it are travelers and very poor people. And givven the poor conditoin of a lot of the chapas, hichhiking is a lot saffer than public transportation. So I waited on the side of the main road with two other volunteers and 20 minets latter a wealthy Mozambiquan in a big SUV stoped and was happy to give us a ride (the shopping center is along the main road and he was going to Maputo anyways). SO initiation into 3rd world hitchhiking compleat! Then going to the shoping center was very strange. It was like a little american minimall. There was a big suppermarket and nice cloathing shops and a couple restautants. I had a straight up feast. Thin crust pizza with capers, olives, and anchovies, followed by a greak salad with feta chease. Then I ate some chocolate I bouyght at the suppermarket. It was so good to eat really nice food and a big salad. If you had told me a year ago that I would be having a nice thin crust pizza for lunch in late july 2011. I would have saied to you: Nope, I will be in peace corps. oh well!