Hi everyone! I’m alive and well here in Namaacha, Mozambique, and am having a great time! I’ve been writing blog posts, but only recently have I gotten internet access to post them (it’s still limited). So here’s what I wrote the weekend I arrived in Namaacha!:

I’m at my host family’s house in Namaacha!! And incredibly, Swaziland is right on the other side of my backyard!!  :)  How cool is that?? This whole experience really cuts through the daze that not sleeping regularly/well or doing any biological process regularly/well puts you in. I can’t believe I’m living in Africa!! That thought keeps coming back to me. This has really been the kind of experience I know I’ll remember forever, something unlike anything I’ve ever done before. 

Where to begin? We had this awesome bus ride yesterday from the capital city (Maputo—pronounced “Mah-puh-tuh”) to our training city/village (Namaacha—pronounced “Nah-maj-ah”) that finally allowed us to see more of the city and the countryside. The excitement on the bus was crazy, and we were all excitedly/nervously studying the Portuguese cheat sheets they gave us in the meager hope of being able to say something--anything—to our host families when we arrived. I at least had “Nice to meet you” (“Muito prazer”) down pretty solid. Getting off that bus and walking to the receiving area was so exhilarating! It felt like stepping onto a roller coaster or diving into cold water, a big plunge. The host family members were all singing when we walked in, which was awesome, and they were holding up signs with our names on them. I found my person, a young woman, and wanted to give her a big hug and tell her how excited I was, but instead we did a small, hesitant hug, and then she took my hand and led me away.

Being led down the streets by the hand makes you feel like a little kid, which is about right. That’s what I sort of am here, a little kid or even a baby. I have to be taught how and when to eat, how to bathe myself, how to use the bathroom. The 8-year-old in the family, who is adorable, has been teaching me how to count to 10 like some learned sage (relative to where I am). So yeah, the experience is a lot like being a baby, and that’s fine with me. You just gotta go with the flow around here and humbly accept that you are pretty much useless for the time being.

As for the woman who picked me up from the reception area in town, I don’t really know who she was. I haven’t seen her since. Is she in the family? Or was she some neighbor helping out by going to pick me up? Who knows. In any case, the family I have come to know a little since yesterday seems really great. They’re not so much a high-energy bunch with a lot of flare, rather they exude a quiet kindness, a quiet sweetness. I feel pretty comfortable in the house already considering it’s only day 2, and I consider myself lucky to have ended up with them. António and Maria Rosa are middle-aged, the father and mother of the house. Their children are Valdo (23), António Junior (14), plus two that are out of town. Valdo’s wife, Aida, is also around (I believe she lives here), as is the wife of the other son that’s not here right now—her name is Arsélia. There’s also that 8-year-old I mentioned, whose name I don’t know at this point, plus there are 2 babies. I believe the young children are all grandsons and granddaughters of Antonio and Maria Rosa. Basically a lot more people than the 2 parents and 2 children I was told to expect! Which is great!

It’s immediately obvious that my Spanish is going to be a huge leg up, which I am very grateful for. But at this point, it’s nowhere near enough to make me conversational, and communicating basic things remains a big struggle. Many Portuguese words are very similar to Spanish words when written, but pronunciation usually distorts them beyond comprehension for me. I’m getting by in the house mostly with a combination of basic Portuguese words and Spanish, but it’s really not getting me very far and I have to be talked to one word at a time to make sense of anything. I’m desperate for our Portuguese classes to begin on Tuesday, and I think we all are.

Holy cow I live in Africa!  Already the way I lived in the United States for 29 years seems distant and impossibly intricate and involved and luxurious. I gotta keep reminding myself that the human body can adapt to anything, that I can adapt to anything, and that each day will be easier. And that’s true. With no running water in the house, lugging it around in barrels and in buckets is a constant part of daily life. I never realized how much I use and depend on running water back home. Some of the problems adjusting to water life here are oddly mechanical: how do I wash my hands when I need to use one of them to pour the water? It’s also important to know just how much water you’ll need for any given task, a skill I still need to develop. I’ll be honest, the bucket shower was intimidating at first. But one of the women of the house was nice enough to warm the water on the stove first so I wouldn’t be cold, and I managed OK. My second bucket shower was better and easier (although I did that one ice-cold), and my third bucket shower was even better. I think I’ll get the hang of this real quick. I’m already amazed at how well you can get yourself clean this way. As for going to the bathroom, that’s a different thing to get used to too. My family is well-off enough to have a bathroom in the house, but it’s still a squat-toilet that you need to dump a bucket of water into afterward to flush. I think I may be the only one in the house that uses toilet paper, but I’m not sure. Our program coordinator told us that some families do use it and some families don’t, but all are instructed to provide it for us volunteers.

Some things in the home are downright funny, at least to me. The mothers in our houses make us shower twice a day, and will prompt us to do it, ask us if we’ve done it yet, and get on our case if they suspect we’re maybe not gonna do it or if we’re being slow to do it.   What else… sitting down to drink tea is a hugely big deal here. It seems like skipping tea is about on par with skipping a meal… why would you do that? Is something wrong?  

The house has electricity, which is nice. But it’s gone out twice for substantial time in the day-and-a-half I’ve been here. The family also has a small computer and a bunch of cell phones. Obviously no heating or air conditioning. It’s been cold here! At least so far. Right now it’s probably in the 40s, or at least low 50s. I’m told we’re sort of up in the hills or maybe even mountains, so that’s why. It’s also been raining a ton, like almost all day.

All in all, I’m in really good shape so far! I’m super excited to be here and can’t wait to be able to talk more with my family and get to know them more. And I can’t wait to walk around my area of Namaacha some more and get to know it. (Namaacha is fairly large, but has the population-density feel of a rural town of maybe 300 people in the U.S.) I’ve felt sorry for myself only very briefly a couple of times, and mostly have been able to stay upbeat. It really hasn’t been too hard, just a lot different and a little shocking and very character-building, which I love. I haven’t cried yet (one of the current PC Volunteers helping with our training told us that everyone cries eventually, and everyone craps their pants eventually, and it does no good to be quiet or embarrassed about it so it’s better just to accept it and be open about it).

OK, it’s getting late so I’ll wrap this post up. Let me just say that I miss you all back home and it’s no fun not having an internet connection to be able to contact you. And I’m thinking I’ll have no way to wish my dad a happy birthday on Tuesday, which I really wish I could do. Keep sending me warm thoughts and positive energy, everyone! I’ll end the post with a picture of my mosquito net bed, which I absolutely love. I love it like a 6-year-old loves his pillow fort, in pretty much the same way. It makes me feel good and protected and it keeps out not just mosquitoes but all sorts of horrifying African bugs and spiders.

I have arrived!! It’s late Friday night for me here, and after a whirlwind couple of days, I write this post from the hotel in Maputo (capital of Mozambique) where I’ve been staying since yesterday. But I don’t want to get ahead of myself…

My trip started Monday morning. After a weekend of difficult but touching goodbyes, my dad dropped me off at the airport around 9:15 a.m. After checking my bags and going through security, I was in search of “Sam” and “Jordan”, two fellow Peace Corps Volunteers I knew to be on my same flight to Philadelphia. Gender-ambiguous names? Yes. They turned out to both be women (a statistical likelihood in the Peace Corps). We were off to Philadelphia for Staging!

By far the most insane thing about this experience so far has been this: within a couple of hours late Monday and early on Tuesday in Philadelphia, I met roughly 50 people and then continued to spend nearly every waking moment with them since. That’s not an exaggeration either, since we didn’t break for sleep or alone time until last night (Thursday). 50 is a lot of people, and after you spend hours and hours talking to and really getting to know a couple of them, you turn around and find yourself with a dozen more new faces and realize you’ve hardly made a dent in the group.

These roughly 50 are my fellow Mozambique Group 21 – my “freshman” class, all of us in the education discipline over here. It’s a really phenomenal group, and I’ve already met a lot of individuals I can see myself getting really close to. It’s great to be surrounded by so many like-minded people, and/but honestly, I stand in awe of a lot of them. So many are very smart, very ambitious, very friendly and confident, overall very impressive people. You get the impression that many of them are destined for great things and are ready to overcome any obstacle. I feel my motivation and my standards for myself growing in their presence. The group trends young by Peace Corps standards; although the average PC Volunteer age worldwide is 28, our Mozambique group is compromised almost exclusively of people in their twenties, with many individuals being right out of college, having just graduated in May.

Anyway, back to Staging. Staging at our hotel in Philadelphia was all about getting-to-know-each-other ice-breaker activities, an overview of what the next two years will be like, talking about what’s expected of us as Volunteers, addressing our hopes and fears, plus a lot of paperwork. After a full day of this on Tuesday, we finally boarded two buses at 2 a.m. (Wednesday morning) bound for New York City. I’m not sure why they built so much time into the schedule, but we arrived at JFK airport at 4:30 a.m., 6 hours early for our flight! Here’s a picture I took of our group around sunrise, waiting to be allowed to check our luggage. Conversation, card games, attempts at sleep, general confusion and malaise. One of these girls was designated to hold a bag of our 50-ish new Peace Corps passports.

Two fun things about traveling with this group: (1) We made the journey to Mozambique without the aid of any Peace Corps staffer. 50 people just sort of figuring things out as we went along. It was empowering and it felt nice to be trusted with this responsibility. There’s not a lot that can trip up 50 capable people working together. (2) The extent to which this group looked out for each other and has been looking out for each other from the start has been staggering. With remembering and carrying luggage, with rearranging the contents of luggage to meet baggage weight requirements, with support, with everything. It feels really great to be a part of this community of kind-hearted people.


The flight to South Africa was over 15 hours long, and there’s not much else to say about that—everyone watched a lot of movies, tried to sleep a bit, and talked to each other. You emerge from that kind of passage and have no idea what time of day it is, or even what day it is. The crazy thing is that a Peace Corps group bound for Senegal that we met in Philadelphia said their flight was only 7 hours long; a staggering disparity from our trip. Africa is SO immense.

In Johannesburg, South Africa, we had another long wait for our transfer to Mozambique. Another Volunteer (Heather) and I were made to check out carry-on luggage at the gate in New York (mine was my guitar), which were then sent to the luggage carrousel in Johannesburg, which meant we had to actually go through immigration and enter South African soil to go get them; they wouldn’t arrive in Maputo without our intervention. Long story short, we got South African stamps in our passports.  :)

We arrived at the airport in Maputo, Mozambique (mid-afternoon on Thursday), retrieved all our luggage (not a single person lost a single possession from a single bag), and were greeted by the PC Mozambique country director, Carl. Carl greeted us with… paperwork. (This has been the story of the whole trip, there’s always something else to do—our biological needs, like sleeping, can wait  :)  ) Carl seems like a great guy and I think we’re lucky to have him running the show over here.

Outside of the Maputo airport, we packed into a bunch of little vans, or chapas, and had an awesome ride through the city to our hotel. So exciting! There were palm trees everywhere. The streets were all full of life. With the Portuguese words on shop fronts and signs (so similar to Spanish), it all reminded me a lot of places I’ve been to in Latin America. Our destination was the Hotel Cardoso in Maputo, where we’ve been staying since we arrived yesterday. It is super fancy by the standards in this country, and even pretty nice by the standards back home in the U.S. The PC staff is constantly saying, “don’t get used to it,” constantly stressing how atypical this lifestyle is compared to what we’re about to embark on. Apparently, there is no other hotel in the city that can accommodate all of us.

Upon arrival at the hotel yesterday, there was more paperwork to do and then most of the group got shot up with vaccines and had medical interviews. No rest for the weary. At 7 o’clock we had a huge, nice dinner which probably consisted of a bunch of Mozambican foods I hadn’t eaten before—not totally sure what all I ate. One Mozambican thing I know for sure I tried was peri peri (as I believe it’s called). It’s a hugely popular sauce here.

There’ve been a bunch more relatively mundane things to do between last night and tonight. Let’s just say that the 7 hours of sleep I got last night in an actual bed were absolutely divine, and that the big items since then have been security briefings, overviews of the education program here, and my personal “medical interview,” where I was given my anti-malaria medicine. I start that tomorrow.

The fancy hotel with hot showers and elaborate meals, all the English—almost none of this stuff so far resembles the real Mozambican experience I will come to know. That begins to tomorrow: around noon, we leave the hotel and go to Naamacha to meet our host families for lunch! I’m really excited about this part, and just about all the other volunteers are too. I don’t have a lot of details about this yet, but I do know my family is supposed to consist of a mother and father, a son, and a daughter. I gotta learn Portuguese real quick! They don’t speak English (a good thing).

Anyway, sorry that my thoughts are pretty scattered in this post. I wish I had the time to do better justice to all the exciting things that’ve transpired this week and what it has been like, but it’s been too hectic and I’ve been too busy. Not sure when I’ll be able to post again, but I certainly will when I get the chance. Wish me luck meeting my host family tomorrow!

Much love,
Brian

My trip begins tomorrow (!!) with a late morning flight to Philadelphia for Staging. I'll be arriving the evening before everything starts.

September 24: Staging (in Philadelphia)
Staging is basically a chance for all the new Volunteers to meet each other and have a stateside orientation before traveling over to Mozambique together. Staging is one day only, from roughly noon until evening this Tuesday. There are documents to sign and other such things. Mozambique Volunteers only!--my “freshman” class.

September 25-26: Travel
At 2 a.m. the morning of Sept. 25, we all hop on a bus for New York City. From there, it’s a long flight to Johannesburg, South Africa, our one and only layover. By then it’ll be the middle of the night there, I think. Sleeping in the airport? The next day (Sept. 26) we fly to Maputo, the capital city of Mozambique. I’m not totally sure what happens next, but it basically involves a 2-hour drive to the Pre-Service Training city, Namaacha. It looks like Namaacha is VERY close to Swaziland and South Africa, which is exciting. Anyway, I think this is the point where I meet my Mozambican host family… and hopefully get to finally sleep in a bed again after like 48 hours.

September-December: Pre-Service Training (in Mozambique)
I’m really looking forward to this time. My understanding is that all us new volunteers live in Namaacha with our various host families and attend classes together by day. The overwhelming majority of what we have to learn is language—that’ll be the Portuguese that is spoken at school and at work, the country’s national language. But the training involves some other things too, such as professional development as teachers, learning about Mozambican culture, and more. At some point during Pre-Service Training (PST), we get our permanent site assignment.

December 2013- December 2015: Service at Permanent Site
This is the meat and potatoes of Peace Corps service. My permanent site is where I'll spend the following 2 years, living and working as an English teacher. It could be anywhere in the country! They don’t decide where to send all the different Volunteers until sometime during Pre-Service Training. I’ll have two projects, really: my primary project is English education, and my secondary project is something I’ll have to develop on my own after identifying a way I can help benefit the community.

One thing to keep in mind is that plans sometimes change in the Peace Corps. You occasionally hear about Volunteers starting their time in one country, then being sent to a different country midway through service for whatever reason. Then there's the outside possibility of something major—like a huge natural disaster—that causes Peace Corps to evacuate all the Volunteers from the country.


Seen in the map below, Maputo is the capital of Mozambique and Namaacha is the Pre-Service Training city! Right near the borders with South Africa and Swaziland.

This summer has been all about reconnecting with friends and family, trying to psychically come home from Ecuador and sort through the last year and a half, and trying to get ready to go to Mozambique with the Peace Corps. A 3-month period between two colossal trips. There’ve been a lot of good moments with family and friends that have been restorative and just plain nice. It’s been a time of settling into easy familiarity, manic binging on old favorite foods and material comforts, and/but also plenty of anxiety. A monsoon of Peace Corps logistics. And a whole lot of woah—I’m a lot different than I used to be.

Here’s a look at what I’ve been up to this summer:

Ecuador.
This summer brought to a close my 18-month stint in the unforgettable Cuenca, Ecuador (think Brigadoon set in South America  :)   ), where I spent my time teaching English and meeting incredible human beings. I returned from Cuenca on June 20th, in all honesty, shattered. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced such a mash-up of incredible highs and lows in such a short period of time as I did that last month or two in Ecuador, and if I ever do again I’m not sure I’ll survive it. The experiences, the warmth and kindness I was shown there, the people I grew so close to and then said goodbye to—these things deserve thousands of pages of words themselves and will take me years to unpack. I don’t think I’ll ever truly express just how much that trip and those individuals have meant to me.

I was lucky to have such supportive people to come home to here in Chicago when I came home in June—my god did I need it. My mom and dad, my sisters, a couple of herculean friends—I don’t know what I would’ve done without you guys.

Costa Rica.
Mazel tov! My good friends Gideon and Molly got married this summer, and we headed down to Costa Rica in late June to kick off their awesome marriage with an awesome wedding weekend. The ceremony reached its pinnacle with the traditional groom-dancing-to-Beastie-Boys-with-his-longtime-friend-Brian. OK not really, but there was a chuppah, Gideon stomped a glass under some cloth, and then the reception began with some really fun traditional dancing. Gideon’s dad presided over the whole ceremony as rabbi, which was very cool, and Gideon’s mom later presided over the dance floor with her sick moves.

Here’s a little musical tribute me and some friends put together for the couple!

In the days following the wedding, my friend Pat and I got the chance to travel around the country a bit before heading home. Costa Rica is such a fantastic place. Note to Ecuador friends: apparently they say chévere in El Salvador… nowhere else that I’m aware of.

South Dakota and Wyoming.
EPIC father-son roadtrip! In mid-July, my dad and I packed up and headed out west for an excellent 8-day trip of Oregon Trail proportions. We saw the Badlands (bizarre and beautiful), Mount Rushmore (fascinating history), Devil’s Tower (just completely unreal), the Black Hills / Custer State Park (gorgeous), Crazy Horse monument (a moving and staggeringly ambitious project), and Wind Cave National Park (most complex cave in the U.S.!). Prairie dogs and buffalo. The craziest storm I have ever driven through in my life. And more. –We definitely packed a lot into 8 days. I love a good roadtrip, and it was really great to be able to have this experience with my dad before leaving home for so long.

Family.
I had a LOT of making-up-for-lost-time to do with my family this summer. Many birthdays, my sister’s graduation, my niece’s baptism, a mini-vacation to South Haven, Michigan—it’s been good and wholesome and restorative. I’d been missing everyone a whole lot, and I’m so lucky to have these guys. Like I mentioned above, the support and understanding and love I’ve received from my family is more than anything I could ever ask for. And congrats to Megan for becoming a family therapist!

Ps. I’m Keira’s godfather!   :)

Murder Mystery Dinner.
Every couple of years, my friend Tom Fairbank and I combine forces Power Rangers-style for some monster creative undertaking. This is the second piece of murder mystery dinner theater we’ve written, and… my god, they are not getting easier.   :)
 
Set in Prohibition era Philadelphia, this one included mobsters, aristocrats, a flapper, an Okie, a jazz singer, and more. 14 characters with full backstories, interrelations, motives, and clues. Greg Fairbank died magnificently and arrived back on the scene a short time later as an investigative reporter with awesome glasses and a British accent. Guess who the murderer was!

Music Project: A Chorus of Longing.
My sister Megan, her boyfriend Scott, and I decided it would be fun to put together a band for one short-lived blowout summer music project. These two are CRAZY talented and it was awesome to get the chance to work with them. Megan sang lead and played percussion, Scott sang lead and played keyboard, and I played guitar. We put together 4 originals and 2 covers, including a certain Valentine’s Day 2013 serenade classic, “Para Tu Amor.”  :)  We had a big show last weekend at Silvie’s Lounge in Chicago and are playing again this Saturday at BRIANFEST.

You can listen to some really lo-fi recordings here at our website.
A highlight of this project for me was that for it, Scott wrote his first complete song, called “Time and Change,” and Spoiler Alert: it totally rocks. These two really need to keep singing together in some capacity after I leave.

Solo Music Project.
Still racing to finish this! I’m recording 4 original songs professionally with my friend TJ. This project has been my baby for a long time. I would’ve recorded 7 had I had enough time! Will link to this as soon as I release it, stay tuned…

B R I A N F E S T.
My mom has outdone all other human beings and is throwing me a huge blowout going-away party, a despedida. In keeping with a theme established years ago for my sister’s graduation party (MEGANFEST), it’s called BRIANFEST. This Saturday!

That’s a quote from Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist, easily one of the most beautiful books ever written. I thought to myself, what better way to kick off my Mozambique blog than with a quote from such a great Portuguese-language novelist?

In using the word destiny, Coelho was referring to one’s Personal Legend. A person’s Personal Legend is their story, their mission, their dream, the thing they were put on this earth to do. Everybody has a Personal Legend that’s completely their own, unique to that individual. What’s your Personal Legend? You know only by listening to your heart and following wherever it takes you. This core idea pervades an astoundingly wide range of the manifestations of humanity’s thought and belief. It appears again and again across cultures and through time, from the highest art forms to the adages of everyday common sense. Follow your heart. Follow your heart. This is the advice my wise, wise parents have given me throughout my life during times of difficultly.

I think Coelho had young people in mind when we wrote about Personal Legends. For the last 2 years, I’ve tried my best to live by his dictum, and can no longer imagine living any other way. In doing so I join the ranks of many wonderful friends and personal heroes of mine who have come before. My heart and my Personal Legend now take me to the sights, sounds, and people of Mozambique, a country the currently association-free quality of whose name will seem retrospectively inconceivable to me in the coming months and years. For now, this blog is titled “Into Mozambique: Um Caminho.” Um caminho means a journey or a path in Portuguese (Portuguese being the national language of Mozambique—everyone’s second language and no one’s first). As much as this trip is about the external things I want to accomplish, it’s about my own personal journey and growth. The rewards, the frustrations, the loneliness, the camaraderie, the daily workouts of character. But above all I hope, being filled up and feeling intensely alive. 

If I am to think about when this all began for me, I’d point to a talk I had with my good friend Katie Green at her Chicago apartment. This must’ve been at least 4 years ago. She’d earlier done a 2-year stint in Cameroon with the Peace Corps, a program I didn’t know even the first thing about at the time. I was amazed that such a thing existed and that she had done it, and we stayed up half the night talking over some beers, me asking her question after question.

I’m grateful to Katie for first inspiring me to do Peace Corps, and it’s my humble ambition to try to pass that seed crystal along to someone else if I can. I start this blog off in that spirit, and also just in the hope of capturing and sharing some of the incredible things I’ll be seeing and experiencing! Some of them will be concrete while others will be intangible. Jilted ex-enthusiasts of my old Ecuador blog, fear not!—I promise to do a much better job keeping blog updates coming this time around  :) .  I’m making it a priority.

Just found out that apparently there are a lot of mosquitoes in Africa, so I should probably go look into some bug spray or something.

Less than a week to go now!   :)