The Walls are Leaking

The walls are leaking.  My bed is wet. My xi-xi bucket is filling up with water I’m collecting from where the roof is letting water drip into my room.  I thought that Sandy, the impending “perfect storm” ominously situated over the entire east coast was supposed to be bad; but then I found out what the worst parts of the Mozambican Rainy Season were really like. 

As my former home braced for impact, my new home didn’t even see it coming.  Just another storm we thought: Some rain, some mud, and complete certainty that we’d lose power.  When the gloomy storm clouds over Namaacha finally decided to empty their bowels right on tops of us, Hurricane Sandy began to traverse the DC Metropolitan area.  The lights barely flickered on Longwood Drive, all the while I found myself using a broom to battle a flash flood of water that was trying to breach the top of a temporary dam I had built from rocks, sandals and socks to guard the entrance of my host family’s African shack.  Once the front was secure, I went to place buckets inside the house to catch water that was leaking from the roof, walls, and floor (the water entering from the later method proved to be most difficult to catch; I blame gravity for that one).  The rain continued for about a half hour, carving out miniature canyons in the earth as rivers of mud, rock, and rain began to form and flow down the hill of our mountain-side machamba (for those that don’t know, I live on a farm on the side of a rolling mountain). The flashing lighting that was accompanied by a ferocious thunder and torrential downpour made me feel oddly close to home.  After all, I thought, how funny that my American family was supposedly going through the same exact thing. 

When the storm finally passed and the skies cleared up, we had a chance to inspect the damage.  Apparently, this has been the worst rain Namaacha had seen since 2005. One of our freshly plowed fields (my Pai is planning on planting peanuts, or amendoim) was transformed into a sea of mud (matope!).  Because it was completely compacted, the soil would have to be turned over again.  This is done by hand with a hoe-like tool called an enxada.  It’s a lot of back-breaking, bending-over work that really sucks doing.  But, he barely shrugged after acknowledging that all the hard work he had just put in was all for naught. He just accepted it.  Alas, that’s life here; and life goes on.

While we had been victorious at keeping the water from flowing into our house, our casa de banho wasn’t so lucky.  The matope river had decided that it would flow right on through our ghetto little bathing shack and left behind about two inches of mud caked to the cement floor.  Here’s a picture!

Matope Central

My African Abode

I figured it’s probably about that time that I tell you all a little more about where it is I’m living these days.  Well, if that’s what you fancy, then this post is for you. Here’s a tour of the African domicile I currently call home.

A crappy picture of my house from the street.

 

Closer shot of my house with the caravan in front.

View of the caravan where Mandinho and Octavio sleep.

View of the front yard from the front of my house.

 Inside:

Walking in the house, this is a view of the living room/dining room.

Another angle of the living room/dining room.

My Room:

Looking into my room!

Forgot the word for this thing, but I have one.

Where the magic happens...

This is my room!  I’ve actually got a full size bed, which is pretty cool.  Not all volunteers do, but I guess I’m just special.  The white net-y looking thing you see in the picture is just that, a net. Every night I have to tuck it in under the mattress so as to protect myself from the mosquitos that fly around my room at night with the constant request to trade me some malaria in exchange for some of my blood.  I’ve politely declined a number of times, but just like the guys that try to sell you useless crap on the streets in Maputo, they are relentless.  As a result, I’ve decided to take certain measures in an attempt to prevent those little bastards from trying to force the trade without my consent, hence the mosquito net.

The other item I’d like to point out in my room is the xi-xi bucket (which actually isn’t pictured, but still important none the less).  I’ve mentioned in a few of my previous posts, but I don’t think its purpose has ever been explained.  I use this bucket to pee in during the night.  It prevents me from having to walk outside the house and battle insects, animals, and vagrants when I have to pee at 2am.  Sounds gross, but it’s actually incredibly practical.  I love this thing, and so long as I clean it out every morning (which I do; most of the time with bleach too!), there’s never a problem with smell.

Walking around the side of the house, this is the entrance to the kitchen with the casa de banho in the background.

The Infamous Casa de Banho.

 

I take showers here!

This is the room that I take showers in, but it’s not your ordinary “water falls from a spigot shower” that I’m taking.  No, this is Mozambique.  So, instead of just spinning some handles and waiting for the water to warm up, I warm up my water in an electric-kettle (or teapot over fire), pour it into the purple bucket shown in the picture, and then add some cold water from the spigot in our front yard (this gives me more water to work with too!).  Then, after saying hi to the humongous spider that sits in the corner and watches me bath, I use a small plastic mug and a bar of soap to bath myself.  Fun! 

The Inside of the Latrine

This, my friends, is called a latrine; and although it looks revolting, it’s not as miserable to use as you might think.  My typical latrine routine is as follows:  First, I make sure to step carefully as I walk down to the bathroom so as to avoid stepping on any 6-inch long millipedes that might be walking around (they are harmless, but still daunting).  Before entering, I flip the switch on the outside of the casa de banho to turn on the light.  I then enter and walk up to the chimney you see in the picture.  I grab onto the cover, rattle it a bit while it’s still covering the pit so that any roaches that are on it will fall off the bottom before I remove it.  After lifting the cover, I then blow into the hole to make the other roaches in the chimney move down (and not fly out and attack me while I pee or do other thing), do my business, put the top back on, and finally wash my hands in the bucket you see in the picture. Then I take a bath in hand-sanitizer.

 

Additionally, I’ve taken a video of the property, where I walk around and show the place off.  Because it’s such a big file though, I’m gonna have to wait to post it until I get to a place where I’m not paying for my internet by the megabyte.

Halloween!

That was some Halloween Party.  We may be 17 million miles away from all things Americana, but in the last 5 weeks, I’ve never felt closer to home.  Here are some highlights:

Good Vistas:

Purty.

The mountain that looks over Namaacha.  The left hald is South Africa, while the right side is Moz.

Good Roupas:

This picture is a whole lot funnier when you've been getting nothing but a banana, sweet crackers and a juice box as a snack twice a day, every day for like 5 weeks.

Good Bebidas:

And some local spectators too:

 

These kids sat on this wall and watched us for a significant number of hours.

My favorite costume of the night was the conjured up by Jennea, one of my fellow trainees.  As our group has seemed to come up with a pretty extensive list of medical excuses that have required visits to the Capitol city, She dressed up as a free trip to Maputo.  She had a band-aid on her head (Charlie cracked his head open), bandage around her hand (Grisha sliced his hand open), a key taped to her eye (I cracked my eye open), and finally red dots painted on her face and arms (Matt just got over a case of the Chicken Pox).  It was awesome, and she deserves acknowledgement in the form of a posting on my blog:

What's the Portuguese word for "witty"?

PS – It’s raining again, so here’s a picture of my host brother dressed as a banana

Mister Feijao

Some Thoughts to Start off Week 4

Just a few thoughts at the state of Week #4:

• I was in a weird mood today.  Not sure if it’s actually the case, but maybe the honeymoon phase is starting to fade.  I’m still very happy, but I’ve found myself into be a little irritable as of late.  Maybe it’s the medication for my eye?  All I know is that I don’t like being irritable.
• I’m not sure the bottoms of my feet will ever be clean again.
• There happens to be a really good reason my host family keeps a collection of multi-gallon containers around the house. Our water source (a spout in the yard that is connected to a municipal distribution system), is inconsistent at best.  You never really know when it’s going to be functional, and as a result, it’s good practice to fill up every single container you can with water so that you are stocked up when your spout inevitably goes dry.  Don’t worry folks, we don’t just leave that water sitting around days on end for the mosquitos to breed in.  My family actually uses the water in the containers daily for their every-day needs, refilling them as necessary.  This actually serves a secondary purpose, allowing a lot of the particulate matter that’s in the dirty water to settle to the bottom. Pretty smart!
• I just discovered an entirely new reason for why it is a good idea to take my evening shower prior to it getting dark out.  Namaacha (and I’m sure the rest of Africa) has random power outages.  You really can’t predict it.  Maybe it’s because you didn’t buy enough credit to last you through the night (Side Note: Mozambicans buy their electricity much like they buy cell phone minutes.  You go to the market and buy a code, which you then punch into a machine that’s hooked up to your house.  The machine has a meter that counts down to zero as you use up your electricity credit.  It’s kind of a great system and I think I like it a whole lot more than the estimations that US companies use.), maybe it’s because the wind is blowing, or maybe a dog started barking and that was reason enough to cut the power to the whole town. For whatever reason it actually is, the power comes in and out.  Tonight, we conveniently had one of those black-outs while I was just finishing up my bucket shower (on the bright side, at least I wasn’t just starting it).  Let me set the stage for you:  So there I am, just finishing up when all of a sudden the light bulb in my steel bathing shack goes black.  I’m alone, naked, wet, and trapped in a box with what is most likely an even bigger karma spider that has moved to replace the last one.  How does the story end?  Well, obviously I survived, but not without nearly laughing myself to death first. This country is starting to grow on me.
• It started raining like 13 or 14 days ago, and it really hasn’t stopped since.  They mean business here in Africa when they tell you it’s the rainy season. After a week of sun and an overdose of dust our first seven days here, it’s been Matope (mud) Central ever since.  It was hot and sunny earlier today for a few hours, but it just started coming down again, and it’s coming down hard.
• When it rains, my room leaks.  Sometimes (if I remember), I use my xi-xi bucket to catch the water dripping from the ceiling.
• I wish I had brought more pants to Pre-Service Training.  I think one of these days I’m going to write a list of what I wish I had packed in my ten week, PST Bag.