Feliz Natal! Holidays, PC Moz style.

The dust is finally settling from quite a Peace Corps Christmas adventure. One thing I have to start out by saying: I love Peace Corps volunteers. I loved all the returned volunteers I knew before I came here. They were all such warm, kind people who were also so good at getting sh*t done. In grad school, I noticed that the RPCV's were the people who did what they said they were going to do when they said they would do it. And usually cheerfully. Wanting to join that club is probably part of what got me here... And my first Christmas here in Mozambique only reinforced those feelings.

This year's Christmas celebration actually started with the university's holiday party last Friday. We have only had two meetings with the directors there - most of their focus has been on wrapping up 2012 and fixing the apartment of Don, the other PC volunteer who arrived here with me. But on Friday, we met with the director of the school and also the coordinator of the MBA program. As it stands, it looks like I will be the coordinator of the Communication for Development department and will be teaching a business management class within that department. I may also be helping the school start a radio station, once the licensing has been completed (a dream-come-true opportunity for someone who always wanted to work at the UMass station, but never did). Eventually, I will be picking up modules on Global Markets and Business Strategy within the MBA program. More on all of that later. At the meeting, our director let us know that we should come back around 6:30 or 7:00 that night for the school's holiday party. Hoang, the volunteer who has been teaching at the university for the last year, had told us about the party, including the "amigo segredo," the Mozambican version of a secret Santa gift exchange.

Don, Hoang and I arrived at around 7:15, what we were thinking was a slightly late, but entirely appropriate time in a culture where things get started at a pretty leisurely pace. We found a dark, empty function room and a hallway lit only at the very end. As we walked towards the lights, our administrative director appeared from around the corner and let us know that preparations were still going on in the kitchen. After insisting some with the ladies prepping veggies, I managed to snag a knife and a spot at the counter and helped ready some of the salad ingredients. Eventually, after joining an impromptu sing-along of "It Must Have Been Love" with my director on guitar, we wandered onto the roof deck and helped with quality control on the mounds of chicken and beef being barbecued.

Rooftop grilling at UCM. É um processo.

Cut to 10:15 when we were all finally pushed downstairs to where chairs had been set out in a circle around three long serving tables. Since I had been told to come for dinner at 6:30 or 7:00,  I was nearly keeling over with hunger by then. People started scampering around, herding up the guests and readying them for holiday speeches. After twenty minutes or so, the food began to appear from the kitchen and was set down on the tables. A little before 11, our director welcomed everyone and recapped the year that had just ended for the university. As he wrapped up his speech, he asked for a vote on dinner versus gift exchange. As I was on the edge of fainting, it was perfectly clear that everyone would want to eat and then enjoy the Secret Santa on full, satisfied stomachs. What I didn't know is that everyone else had gone home and eaten in anticipation of dinner not being ready until midnight. The vote went overwhelmingly for gifts and the plastic wrap stayed over the food. After each of the 40 gifts had been exchanged - each exchange being documented with a picture of the giver and recipient holding the wrapped gift, another of the gift being opened and a third of the new gift being proudly displayed - dinner was finally served around 12:45. And it was delicious! Also, my director was thoughtful enough to bring small gifts for Don and me, since we arrived in Chimoio well after the exchanges had been determined. I can't wait until I am integrated enough into the culture to know things like, eat before you arrive at the Christmas party. We ended up leaving just as the dancing started at 1:15, since we weren't sure when the next ride would be available. Also, the first of my fourteen PC Christmas guest was arriving at 8:00 the next morning.

Sarah and Andrea at the Luz Verde. Mozambican stockings and snowstorm.

Because I have a large house with lots of extra room and I am in a city that is pretty much in the middle of the Central region of the country, I offered to host any of the Central PCV's who wanted to come for Christmas. Of the 19 volunteers from my group in the region, 16 came to celebrate together (including Don and myself). I was a little anxious about having so many people all in my house, which is large but by no means huge, but knowing the low-drama, mellow, responsible makeup of our group, I was pretty sure it would work out well and I couldn't have been more right.

About half of the group, those who lived closer, had arrived by midday on Sunday. We planned out menus for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and did the bulk of the shopping before those coming in from farther provinces arrived. By Sunday night, everyone was there and we all went across the street to the Luz Verde for roasted chicken and xima or potatoes. For those volunteers in rural sites, such a healthy dose of protein was a rare treat. Even though we had decided to make chicken for Christmas dinner, everyone dug into their quarter- or half-chickens with gusto. 

Relaxing after many chapa rides from near and far.

The next three days were a whirlwind of cooking and eating, with some shopping mixed in for the people who needed to stock up on supplies while in the city. We feasted on french toast, latkes and freash fruit for breakfast; a spicy vegetable curry, jasmine rice and enormous salad Christmas Eve; and a feast of chicken and fixin's on Christmas, followed by iced sugar cookies, gingerbread, green mango crisp and a mountain of fruit salad and all accompanied by mulled wine and cider. While cooking these meals for a crowd of 16 would usually be trabalho, it was made a little more challenging by the fact that my hybrid electric/gas stove isn't 100%. We found out that the electric oven only heats to about 80°F. Also, one of the electric burners only heats to one temperature (about hot enough to almost simmer water) and doesn't turn off, and the gas tank has a leak. I had been using it anyways, but with the amount of cooking we needed to do, no one wanted that much gas in the air. So we had one electric burner that could be adjusted with a leatherman, but the other burner would be running the whole time, whether or not it was in use.

We clearly wouldn't be able to cook enough for everyone with this situation. One burner was fine for french toast Monday mornning, but even curry and rice would be dificult without two burners. And there was no way to mull wine at the same time or make Christmas cookies at all! Many of the volunteers who were visiting didn't even have electricity at their sites, let alone an oven. Even those with energia were mostly cooking on hotplates as "real" stoves or ovens are very expensive here and most houses don't have them standard. The Peace Corps budget certainly doesn't include one and I am just lucky to have a school that has the money and it willing to provide one, even if it has some problems. The standard method of baking for PCV's is in a "dutch oven," made by filling a large pot with sand or dirt and placing a smaller pot or pan inside. When covered, this creates a hot space that is more than adequate to turn out some delicious cakes, cookies and roasts. So all we needed was some more burners. 

Latkes with pineapple-mango salad; Christmas chicken feast; green mango crisp. 

I had been wanting to get one of the omnipresent carvão (charcoal) stoves that every Mozambican family uses, even most with ovens, since they are much cheaper to run when cooking anything that takes a long time. It is also the best way to grill, which I just love to do. The only problem was that it was now midday Christmas Eve, most stores were closed and we had been running around in the heat all morning. Our best chance would be the mercado down the street, so we decided to give it a try. There is a group of guys with a stand right on the corner of the market that I have bought from a lot. They like to joke with me about going back to the US and have been good about helping me find things at other stands if they don't carry them. We explained to them that we needed a fogão de carvão, hoping they would lead us inside somewhere, but they just shook their heads. "Trinta e oito."  The huge market clear across town. That would entail a chapa ride and wandering through a maze of used clothing, wicker furniture, capulanas, fried caterpillars by the kilo and who knows what else in search of a stove that may or may not have been there Christmas Eve. "É muito longe, não é?" We really didn't want to go that far. The youngest guy who always greets me with an enthusiastic, "Amiga!" saw the dejected looks on our faces and offered, "Eu vou procurar!" (I will go get it).

We wandered through the market and got some other veggies and a quick plate of  food (which turned out to be stewed goat's stomach). We also visited the Peace Corps office and were delighted to find a working two-burner hotplate in the kitchen. I grabbed a cold Coke and we returned to the stand to find a beautiful new carvão stove waiting for us. We promised some of the cookies it would be creating, gave him the Coke and 20 mets, and walked home, four burners richer. And this is why I love Peace Corps volunteers. No one blinked at the amount of food we would be turning out on a charcoal grill, hotplate and one electric burner on my stove. The cookie committee baked up four batches of sugar cookies and gingerbread in a dutch oven over charcoal, all perfectly browned on the bottom and golden on top. Each one was a cause for celebration.

And then there were the chickens. When planning the menu, we all talked about our traditional meals growing up. People threw out ideas of ham, turkey, shrimp or fish. We finally decided to visit the new butcher that had opened just outside the center of town that I had heard good things about, and look for a roast. It would be simple; it would be festive and it would be a treat. We also anticipated that it might be expensive, so as a backup plan, we settled on chicken. Then it turned out that the butcher was closed for the holidays, (Yes, they were closed for the holidays two days before Christmas. Welcome to Mozambique.) so chicken it was.

Ryan, killer of chickens. Sarah and the carvão stove that saved Christmas. Lisa chops pineapple. 

Mozambique is full of chickens. You buy them live at the market, and transport them home either dangling in bunches by their feet, piled into a wheelbarrow, in cages on the back of a bike, or sitting inside a plastic bag with a hole ripped to let its head out. (I will have to take some pictures of the chickens you see everywhere on the streets). Chickens are relatively cheap - 110 metecais (about $4) for an average sized hen, 300 ($10) for the larger - and Mozambican chicken is spectacular. The only problem is they come live, and someone has to transform them into the parts we are accustomed to cooking. We had all had the opportunity to learn how to kill, de-feather, clean and cut up a chicken during training, but none of us were excited about doing the deed and only had the most basic understanding of how the butchering process goes. But that wouldn't get in our way. We are Peace Corps Volunteers; we will rise to the challenge. Two of us agreed that we would be willing to do the actual killing if none of the others who would arrive later wanted to take on the challenge. Monday afternoon we made our way to the market and selected four larger birds, to simplify the live-chicken-into-edible-parts process.

I will spare the details, but it was quite a lot of work. And I learned a whole lot about chickens. We ended up with piles of usable meat and decided to grill some over charcoal, fry some American-style and roast another in a dutch oven. I was really excited to slow-roast one with carrots and onions and herbs and red wine, but the limited space proved a challenge. Cramming that much food in a small pot over coal leads to a reeeeally slow roasting process. But I am stubborn and we had more than enough of the grilled and fried, so we decided that the roasted chicken would be ready in time for round two. While the chicken was cooking, we got to work on the mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, green beans and salad that would accompany the meat. We even made piri-piri  (hot chili pepper) sauce from scratch. And we knocked enough green mangoes off the tree in my yard to make a giant pot of cinnamon-y, oat-y, bubbly crisp. 

Ready to take down some chickens (although we were spared the experience); Mozambican Christmas tree; Jonathan mans the carvão.

After a full day of sweating over the carvão and hotplate, dinner was served. We said a couple of blessings, loaded up our plates and piled onto the front porch to eat in the slightly more fresco air outside. As everyone dug in, silence descended. As I took a few bites of the heavenly, butter-laden mashed potatoes, I thought it was because the food was too good to talk. Then I bit into the fried chicken. Or tried to. The batter on the outside was delicious. Jonathan, who had been in charge of both grilling and frying, had outdone himself. But even though the chicken was moist and juicy - perfectly cooked - the flesh was tougher than anything I have ever encourntered. I locked eyes with Alexandra, who had done hours of work defeathering and cleaning the birds, asked "It's a little tough.... isn't it?" and she just started giggling. She signaled that she would answer when her mouth wasn't full and kept chewing. And chewing. And giggling. And chewing. Suddenly, I realized that it had been about a full minute and she hadn't answered because she was still working on the same bite and collapsed in laughter.

It turns out that the larger birds we had selected are older and tend to be tougher. So, next time, we will just suck it up and deal with killing a few more. Luckily, we still had the chicken roasting on carvão in the back. I added more coals and we let it go all night. The next day, we gave it a try and it wasn't exactly fork-tender, but it was easily chewable and quite delicious. We cut the rest of the grilled and fried chicken off the bones and simmered it up into a big pot of chili the next night. And the bones are all in my freezer, waiting to become soup.

Sarah and Lisa enjoying curry; Blessing Christmas dinner with Irish prayers; Anna and curry.

Despite some challenges, everyone had a great time. The chicken was tough, but we ate well anyways and the cookies and mulled wine made it feel a little more like Christmas, even with the heat. Most of all, I think we were all just happy to be together. We had a chance to hear about everyone's different experiences in their communities so far. Everyone came with tales of quirky neighbors, strange things they found left in their houses by previous volunteers, and the sometimes complicated process of establishing their relationships with their new schools. People shared tips about how they are getting by with limited tools and supplies at site. Most importantly, we were able to share the current feelings of excitement about our new lives here, that are mixed with a healthy dose of homesickness, particularly as we thought about our families celebrating the holidays together back home. Throughout the days, folks would duck out on the phone to have long, bittersweet calls with their parents and friends or shut the door to a bedroom and settle into a Skype session. These calls tended to end with a sigh and sometimes a few tears, but having our friends around for a hug made all the difference.

I have to end as I started, by saying how much I love my Central PC Moz 19 volunteers. We had sixteen people gathered together for five-plus days, without a moment of arguing or drama - even when the dreaded moment of splitting up the bills came. It helps that we had made a whole lot of delicious food for very little money, but there wasn't a single word of argument throughout the whole process. Everyone paid their part and even threw in a little extra for utilities. People took every challenge in stride, without complaint. Those who didn't want to cook did dishes cheerfully. The four girls who didn't have to get on a chapa by 5:00 am on the 27th even helped me clean. By 11:00 that morning, my house was cleaner than it had been before everyone arrived. You would never have known that only hours before, 14 people had been sleeping on every available surface and sharing one bathroom. So all I can say is thank you, to all who traveled to be together for our holiday away from home. I love you all and would have happily had everyone back for New Year's!

And to all: Boas Festas e Próspero Ano Novo!