Eu falo Português? Well, sort of.

It’s been 10 minutes, and I keep switching channels between a children’s cartoon and public access television. I finally make my decision: Today will be a cartoon day.

The programming is for a 5-year-old, but it’s a bit advanced for me. It’s in Portuguese.

About eight weeks ago, my spouse’s employer moved us to Mozambique, a country in southeastern Africa. It’s a fascinating place full of opposite extremes – rich in cultural offerings, stunning coastlines and natural resources, but poor in infrastructure, public health and educational resources. It’s a country that holds great promise for growth and progress even as it carries the burden of centuries of colonial subjugation by Portugal, followed by a lengthy civil war.

Mozambique is not one of those countries where an American learns to offer greetings in the local language and then quickly reverts to English for convenience. Portuguese is the official language, and that’s that. To get by, you either speak it or hack away at it. And so I hack away. Yes, it’s hard for a newbie, but as I tell my ever-worried mom back in the States, “Hard doesn’t mean bad.” I’m a guest in this beautiful country, so it’s on me to learn and adapt.

But back to the cartoons. I’ve decided to play them (or local access programming) in the background while I work from home, just to keep a steady flow of Portuguese phrases and pronunciations rolling into my ears. I take lessons twice a week, but the days in between can be long and quiet. A walk to the produce market or a ride in a taxi offers a chance for real-life conversation – and for muitos erros.

But the hardest part of my effort to communicate is not when I speak to the women at the market or to my taxi driver (wait, let’s practice that: não quando falo com as mulheres no mercado ou para meu motorista de taxi). No, the biggest obstacle is my own mind – I’m a perfectionist and a communicator by profession. I’ve worked in daily newsrooms and on Capitol Hill. And for seven years, I taught a course called Grammar for Journalists at ASU’s Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

On my own turf, that means I’m crafting, correcting and finessing words and phrases. I’m pushing to get my content as close to perfect as possible. But out and about in Mozambique, I’m botching simple sentence constructions and mispronouncing common nouns. I can conjugate some verbs, but I often fall back on the infinitive form. I’m trying to be OK with all of this and cut myself some slack. Acalma-se, Jennifer.

One of the first phrases I learned was Desculpe, não falo muito português (“Sorry, I don’t speak much Portuguese”). I use it often, but Mozambicans are patient and friendly. For that, I’m grateful – because this expat communicator has a long, bumpy road to travel, and not just the ones that lead to Mozambique’s magical beaches.

Obrigada, Moçambique. Estou feliz por estar aqui!