Throw up your hats!

So, these past 2 months in Namaacha, Mozambique, I have not really officially been known as a Peace Corps Volunteer. I tricked you all, haha! I was really a Peace Corps trainee! After many, many hours of language classes, technical training and all those damn HUB days, I’m now officially a Peace Corps Volunteer, or better known as a PCV. I somehow passed the language test and know enough about my safety, security, and what I’m suppose to do for medical things while in Mozambique, and they have sent me out on my own. WOOHOO!! I graduated…and unlike normal, I went to the graduation. But that was kind of a requirement to swear in as a volunteer…

In our group of 70 volunteers, we have health volunteers and education volunteers. Within the education, we have science and math teachers, and English teachers. Capulani’s are sold all over Mozambique and are use as the main form of clothing, baby carriers, etc. So each of the 3 sectors described above got matching capulani’s and had a dress or tunic (shirt) made from it. I had a long skirt made. But here’s the story about that:

We arriving in Maputo with a good 2 hours at least to get ready or chill. Unfortunately, we could not get ready because the hotel was not letting us check in until 2…which meant we would have 30 minutes to get ready for the ceremony. And it was a HOT day… I definitely already sweated through the clothes I was wearing at the time. So, we chilled around the hotel…there was a pool…I practiced a dance for the ceremony with a group. When we finally got to our rooms, I took a quick shower, got ready and BAM, I was good to go. I go downstairs, time to spare. James comes down and says Vivienne’s zipper completely broke, which meant the whole backside of her dress was wide open, not quite appropriate for swearing in. The zippers in Mozambique are pretty cheap and I remember another friend’s zipper coming open, but it was an easy fix. So, I run up to the 4^th floor to see if I can help. Her zipper was definitely BROKEN! No doubt about it. I tried for a bit, but we were already late. Ali gave us some sewing needles we could use to pin it closed, so we did that in the long run. We then ran downstairs… well, took the elevator, and NOBODY WAS AROUND! HOLY SHIT!!!! Are we missing our swearing in ceremony? Am I not going to become a volunteer? We walked outside, and thank goodness, there was Claudia, our boss, ready to leave. She told us we had 5 minutes to get anybody who might be left… so we went to each floor and yelled Peace Corps. Only 2 were left. We piled into Claudia’s car and rushed to the ambassador’s house…

I was getting out of the car… (I bet you thought the story was over)… and… WOOPS… MY zipper busted open! Without my zipper, my underwear would be showing and everything else if my skirt had the chance to fall down before I grabbed it! No, we didn’t think ahead… we did not bring extra needles. . . So here is where we had to be creative and innovative with what we had. Claudia was looking for a belt and then looked at my camera strap. I took the camera off the strap, she tied the strap around my waist and she tucked my skirt under it. No, it didn’t look great since it was suppose to be a long skirt…but it looked better than a bare ass! Well, I did have underwear on… so it wouldn’t have been bare… and it wasn’t sexy underwear either…

Swearing in was… well. . . swearing in. For some reason they only had 69 chairs for the 70 of us, so my right butt cheek hurt a bit more than my left butt cheek. Jason and I should have switched halves sooner. There was a small Ngoma Time (talent show). Daniel wrote a song for it and we all had sang it. (I don’t think I am using correct English anymore). Candido taught us a dance also. A dance to drums. It was really cool. We didn’t have time to learn the whole thing with huge kicks in the air and such, but it was pretty cool none-the-less. Either I’ll be able to post it on here, on Facebook, or you’ll just have to wait until I return to the states…OR you can come visit me. This is an open invitation. I do have the space. And where I am, in Mabote, Inhambane, you’ll definitely see Africa.