Meet My Dinner

It seems to be a generally accepted concept that the more time and raw ingredients put into a dish, the better it is. Pizza? Penguin Pizza might be delicious and Digorno sure is convenient, but what could be better than hand-made dough covered with your own choosing of sauces, cheeses, and toppings. Salad Dressing? Paul Newman has his talents, but bring together olive oil, red-wine vinegar, herb du province, Dijon mustard, salt, and pepper (Dad: did I miss anything?) and you’ve just showed that movie star who’s boss. Grilled Chicken? Might as well start with a live chicken!

Dinner, meet the world. World meet my dinner. Thursday night I was greeted home by these 3 balls of feathers which were to promptly become my meal. Though I had been prepared for this eventuality by my some of my fellow volunteers in training, it was still very surprising to be faced with the animals themselves. I’ve never killed an animal before, so I expected it to be difficult to reconcile emotionally. But instead of feeling sympathy, pitty, or anger, I only felt….purpose. These weren’t wild animals with families that they had to feed.  Nor were they house pets which had been loved and cared for. These were chickens which had been born, feed, housed, and delivered solely for the moment where they would be converted from galinha (chicken) to frango (poultry). Without that eventuality, they would have never existed in the first place. So as I ended their admittedly short lives with a few strokes of my knife, I was looking forward to reaping the rewards of my work and not worrying about the karmic response to my actions.

Yes, the conversion from galinha to frango was messy. Yes, de-feathering the birds took a long time. Yes, removing the innards was incredibly disgusting. Yes, cooking them over an indoor coal fire made my eyes water. Yes, it took a full two bucket baths to really get rid of the smell. But yes, it was totally worth it. Just like eating cookies that you've labored over, it always tastes better when you make it yourself.

Moma’s home made from scratch

Well not quite

Toasted over flames

They be tastin quite right

Gorillaz -Superfast Jellyfish

My Mozambiquan Family

All in all, it’s been a great first week in Mozambique (yay it rhymes!) There is nothing that makes adapting to a new culture easier than being with family. This is something I witnessed while I was in China, and wished that I had had the whole time. So when I found out that the Peace Corps has you live with a Mozambuiqean family, I was super excitied. Not only would I be able to practice my newly forming portugese skills and learn about another culture through their eyes, I would have a new family to do it with.

Driving to the trainning facility in Namacha, where our host families are, I was filled with questions about who I would be living with for the next few weeks. How big a family will I have? Will I be their first volunteer? Will there be any english speakrs in the house? What will the living conditions be like? Will I be close to the other volunteers? The answers were found among the wonderful Ngovene family that I ended up with. It includes minha prima Lina, mama Laura, e mi Irma Cecilia. Lina is 14 years old and is quiet and incredibly helpful. Cecilia is a talkative and intelligent 17 year old, also a huge MJ fan. Mama is loving and knowledgeable about her culture, but understanding in my foreign ways. We talk, charade, eat, play, and watch TV together; leagues better than coming back to an empty and lonely room. Though our conversation is limited for now, we have still been able to cover such diverse topics as minha Irma’s chemistry  test to how my dreams have getting crazier since I started taking the mefloquine anti-malarials. Hopefully, as my vocabulary gets better, these conversations will move faster than the speed of my dictionary searching.

Towards that effort, I have about 30 hours of Portuguese lessons a week with other Peace Corps volunteers, which has been helping a ton. Just the fact that someone tells me when my spangesse is wrong has been a huge help. Also we’re learning a ton of new vocabulary for Mozambiquan Portuguese, such as Nindja for theif and Txilar for chilling out. Besides the language classes, we’ve also been having classes on history, education, and health, though I hope the teaching classes start soon because have no clue what I’m doing in a classroom. But I imagine I’ll learn what I need to when I need to, as Peace Corps Mozambique is run surprisingly well.