Mud

Rainy season is beginning here in Murrupula.  For me, that means cooler weather, albeit a higher humidity when the sun does come out; the sound of rain pattering on the zinc roof,  sometimes relaxing, other times so loud you can’t think; thrill from filling up your water buckets with rainwater; and mud.  Walking in the rain, getting a little damp or even soaked, not a problem.  The problem is the mud that accompanies. 

Here in the north, there isn’t much dirt, it’s mostly sand.  Thus, the mud becomes this slushy, sandy, though still “muddy”, sticky substance along the walking paths.  There are no paved roads, no cemented sidewalks here, just mud.

You begin your walk tentatively trying to stay out of the mud puddles and mud rivers that form, walking daintily in an effort not to flip up too much mud with your sandal, or more importantly, to ensure you have a secure foothold before lifting the other foot.  You forget about the umbrella and realize the wind is blowing the rain anyway and turn your focus to scouting out the best path with the less mud. 

Then it gets to the point where you stand, blocked by the mud river that has formed in your path.  No way around it.  No way over it. 

You start to look around and realize that all Mozambicans have vanished and you are the only one walking in the rain.  A few people look out from their covered porches.  Children take baths in the water falling from rain gutters.  But ultimately, everyone has hidden themselves away from the rainwater. 

Still facing the mud river, your only option really is to go through it, hoping it’s less deep than it looks.

A little reflection

I know I have been slacking on blog posts lately (delicately re-emphasized by my mom as well).  I have been travelling around a lot , but honestly I can say this lack of writing is at least partly due to the fact that I just don’t really know what to write about anymore.  I forget what I have written already and now that things are normal for me here, it’s hard to think about what kinds of things will be interesting for any readers I have.  So I was inspired to maybe read through my old journal entries (I have been pretty regular, writing in a journal almost every day) and see if that conjured up some topics to entertain you with.

I went to today’s date to see what I was doing/feeling exactly one year ago, and interestingly enough, it was exactly the day that I left to first arrive in Murrupula.  I thought maybe I’d share a few passages from those first days at site to show the emotional rollercoaster that it was and then to compare with where I am now.

Optimism and excitement before the last night of our conference before heading to our sites.

Dec 11, 2011: The night before driving to Murrupula – Hard to describe the feeling I have now.  Realizing the awesome adventure that is about to begin. I’ve tried not having expectations, but it’s impossible to have none, so I hope it is the community feel or that it gets there with time.  It’s gonna be an exciting, challenging, difficult, maybe lonely, scary, but great adventure these next few months, two years.  It’s almost like now my mind is slowly changing from two years sounding like forever to sounding super super exciting and I can’t wait for the challenge.  Excited to see what is in store and to begin this time for adventure.  This is what I came here to do and what has been months in the making.  Let’s do it!

To be honest, I don’t really remember this last night in the hotel before we came to site.  But reflecting back now, I can definitely confirm that this adventure has been all of those things, and then some.  I still don’t really know if it is all what I expected, but I do feel part of a community now, I know where to go and who to go to, and now I’m excited for the next year to begin.

And then reality hit as I saw my house for the first time.

Dec 12, 2011: Arrival at site (remember I had a roommate at this time) – Arrived at our new home today!  Initial reaction was complete shock!  We walked into a house with dirty walls, doors made for midgets and barely big enough to fit through, tin roof, gate anyone could easily jump over, hole in the ground bathroom….what did we get ourselves into!  A few times we were both on the verge of crying just by the sheer overwhelming-ness of it.  A day filled with every emotion possible.  But I couldn’t imagine doing this alone.  It’s gonna be a long next couple of weeks, needless to say long two years!  And definitely going to be hard and a challenge, but that’s part of why I am here right, to challenge myself.  It’s just a crazy thing to describe, total overwhelming feeling.

Jan 13, 2012: Back at site alone – It’s just so hard.  Plain and simple.  Hard in every way.  And yeah maybe it will get easier and I have to take it day by day and I am staying strong, but it sucks!  I don’t want to eat because food is so limited and sucks to make.  I am tired of throwing things out because I can’t cook for one person and have no fridge still to save things.  Only one outlet works still.  I still have no bed frame and there was a lizard inside my mosquito net.  Yeah I’m gonna meet people and get into a routine and start working, but its just really hard!  I know it’s not really ever going to get easier per say, but gosh how much easier life is at home and how easy it would be to escape this and go!  I know I truly don’t want that and would be totally lost as to what to do with myself there, but right now ease, convenience, and comfort sound awesome!  I can continue to sit here and pout and cry, or I can complete something on my list to get through another day.  It’s easy to fall into a lazy, depressed mode of nothingness, but that’s not me.  So I still feel sucky, but I’m gonna get up and get through another day, even if it is just going through the motions zombie-like.  At least I am still making motions and that’s progress I guess.

I very clearly remember arriving at my house that first day and that complete overwhelming feeling.  I think that Jan 13^th entry really sums up my mindset during those first months at site.  Don’t think everything was negative though, because I promise I had some positive moments in between there too, but it was hard and quite the emotional rollercoaster.  My mantra was, and still is, one day at a time.  Now though, I can honestly say, time goes by a little faster.  It still gets just as frustrating, but now I can usually laugh things off as just quirks of the country I live in and think to myself, yup I should have seen that coming.

I laugh to myself now re-reading that part about the description of my house because really it hasn’t changed much, if at all.  Though the walls are painted and I’ve hung up some maps, artwork, and pictures, I still have a hole-in-the-ground toilet, the doors are ridiculously tiny, and the house is nearly impossible to “clean”, let alone keep clean.  What’s changed is my mindset in regards to it all.  I still have moments like that Jan 13^th entry where it’s frustrating and the convenience would be a very much welcomed relief, but I’ve settled in to this routine now where this is my home, my life here in Africa, and it’s doesn’t seem weird or unusual anymore.  I sit with a flashlight always by my side in anticipation of the electricity going out.  I get a strange sense of pleasure from filling up my water buckets by catching run-off water from the roof.  I feel relaxed after my bucket bath.  I get as creative as I can with rice, beans, tomatoes, onions, and garlic recipes.  I kill bugs with my bare hands.  Ha, Peace Corps Volunteers.  We really are a strange breed.

A Strange Apparition

On Sunday, I stayed in Nampula city before Adam flew home for the holidays.  Upon returning home, I had a strange conversation with Inocencio who had stayed in my house Sunday night.  Below, I have translated the text message conversation.  What do you think?

Me: I just got home.

a few hours later…

Inocêncio: I am sorry for the delayed response, I was sleeping from 3pm until 7pm because at night I did not sleep because I became frightened.

Me: What happened?  Was there a problem?

20 minutes later (meanwhile, I’m running through all the scenarios of what might have happened.  Attempted break in? Successful break in? Am I safe here tonight alone? So Mozambican to say that with absolutely no further explanation!)

Inocencio: Yes because when I arrived there I encountered a white girl sitting in a chair close to the door of your house but the door was not closed.  Then I saw her eyes brighten.  I became frightened and then she disappeared.  I was afraid until 2am.

Definitely not the response I was expecting and it raised many questions. 

Me:  The door wasn’t closed?  A white girl? What time did this happen?

Inocencio: At 7pm.  The door was closed.  When I informed an older woman she said it was a ghost.  I will come tomorrow to explain better.

So then I was left to continue trying to figure out what might have happened and, as you might expect, I didn’t sleep well.

So today, Inocencio came over to explain better.  He repeated the story about how he opened to gate to my yard and then turned the corner and saw a little girl sitting in a chair next to my door.  But then he turned on his light and she had disappeared.  He did not think it was a ghost because he doesn’t believe in ghosts, but he had no other explanation for this apparition.  Do I have a Casper at my house?  (**cue Twilight Zone music**)

A Mozambican Wedding

Saturday, a family that I’m close with (The Uarila’s) invited me along with them to their friend’s wedding.  Attending a Mozambican wedding has definitely been on my list of things I’ve wanted to do here and they assured me that my tagging along was absolutely no problem.  His words, “They invited me and my family, and you are part of this family, so you were invited also.”

A typical Mozambican wedding has two parts: the civil ceremony and the church ceremony.  At 9am, we arrived at the Civil Register Building and joined about 50 others in a small room to watch the bride and groom officially register their marriage in the eyes of the government.  Like American tradition, the bride wore a fancy white dress and a veil.  It was hard for me to hear what was going on the whole time, but the big events included a quick kiss between bride and groom while the crowd sang a song in Macua about how weddings are good, and the bride and groom signing their names in a book while the crowd sang “Do not be afraid to sign”.  A representative of the government led the ceremony, diverging off into a long speech about how domestic violence is not tolerated in a marriage, something I thought was good to address but was maybe not the right setting for such a lengthy speech.

After the hour or so ceremony, we filed out of the stuffy room and sang as the bride and groom entered the car to drive to the church.  The rest of the wedding participants jumped in to two small pick-up trucks, filling the beds of the truck in true Mozambican transportation style.  Inocêncio and I decided to walk to the church.

It was a short albeit really hot 15 minute walk to the church.  On the walk over, I asked Inocêncio some questions about marriage and this couple in particular.  I told him how the bride did not look particularly happy during the ceremony, I don’t think I saw her smile even once.  Soon, I learned that this couple had been married for a long time already and had several children.  According to Mozambican law, if you live together for over two years you are recognized as being married.  This couple just hadn’t had an official wedding and had not yet legally registered their marriage.  Inocêncio explained that the bride was probably just afraid because now it would be much harder to ever decide to end the marriage as it costs about $2000 to get a divorce.  Also, this is just part of the culture here – they don’t really smile in photographs and don’t typically show a lot of excitement during formal events.

We arrived at the church, a small cement building with a thatched roof decorated with torn pieces of paper strung along lines of string and the occasional bunch of purple flowers dotting the ceiling.  Not surprisingly, no one was there yet.  Inocêncio suggested that they probably went to take pictures somewhere in town before arriving at the church.  We sat around for about 30 minutes until we heard the rest of the wedding arriving in honking cars, singing and clapping to a song saying, “It is very good.”  The bride and groom walked from their car to the church through an arch made of palm fronds and down an aisle way decorated with the same torn pieces of papers, the bride walking atop capulanas laid on the ground to prevent her dress from getting too dirty. 

The ceremony in the church was much less formal than any wedding ceremony I’ve attended.  People walk in and out, children kind of roam around, the pastor kept forgetting the bride’s name (she didn’t seem bothered by it at all), there didn’t really seem to be an order of events.  People stood as the bride and groom walked in together, but there was no wedding song (no musicians, in fact, just people singing) nor a wedding party.  The pastor read a couple passages from the Bible and discussed the importance of a monogamous relationship.  The bride and groom read their vows, essentially similar themes to American vows, proclaiming their freewill in getting married and their promise to protect each other and be together forever.  Several singing groups sang songs in Macua, the local language, for over an hour.  To be honest, after a while, every song sounded exactly the same to me and I was itching to get out of that hot church.  After about 3 hours, the singing finally ended, people were done talking, and the bride and groom led the way out of the church, stopping right outside the doors to great everyone as they exited single file. 

By then, the wedding audience had grown to about 75 people and we all proceeded to their house for the reception.  They had set up a covered area with chairs, speakers and a TV, and a few tables filled with food:  buckets (yes, buckets!) of rice and beans, chicken, coleslaw salad, and goat stew – the typical Mozambican meal.  We sat around for a while as, I think, the bride and groom changed clothes and the hosts finished preparations for the party (not really sure what was going on at that time), the food just taunting us just sitting there as my stomach growled.  Finally, the bride and groom came out and everyone was welcomed to eat.  It still baffles me how much rice Mozambicans can eat!  I was telling them that what they ate in one meal would take me probably two days to finish!  I had no idea paper plates could even hold so much food! 

Sitting there, it was interesting to compare the Mozambican wedding with American weddings.  The biggest difference?  The simplicity of everything – simple decorations, simple food, no wedding party, no stress over the number of people and random uninvited people (like me) showing up.  Simplicity.  That pretty much sums up everything about life here.  Much simpler and slow paced. 

Another thing that surprised me was the lack of enthusiasm shown by the couple.  Thinking about it afterward, it really is a big part of the culture to not show much affection and enthusiasm, especially during such formal events or ceremonies.  Quite the stark difference to American culture where toasts are held and glasses are clanged to encourage such displays.  Out of curiosity, I did ask about marriage for love versus marriage for family obligations and was happy to discover that marriage for love is much much more common nowadays.  Maybe the bride was just too hot in her wedding dress in one hundred-something degree heat!  The crowd on the other hand had so much enthusiasm!  Mozambican women make this incredible cheering sound by “wooing” and wiggling their tongues back and forth.  And the amount of music, though I couldn’t understand it, clearly emphasized everyone’s happiness for the occasion. 

We left the wedding reception before the cake cutting, but I’m sure the party went on late into the evening, complete with more singing and dancing.  

Scorpions united!

Another short anecdote I forgot to add about the day of the train ride.

So we had arrived in Cuamba and I went to use the bathroom.  Grabbing the toilet paper roll’s center, I felt something crawling on my hand, but didn’t think much of it.  Then it happened again and I threw the roll down, only to find a SCORPION fall out of it!  That’s right, the scorpion had been crawling on my hand!  Upon further inspection, I am still unsure whether the scorpion was alive or dead because it never moved from its spot on the floor, but either way, scary!

Then later that night, while sleeping on the floor, Zackaria’s cat chased an even bigger scorpion into his roommate’s bedroom!  That one quickly was killed by dropping a heavy book on top of it, but my, were the scorpions out to get me!!

An African Train Ride

Last week, Adam and I decided to take the train to visit Niassia province.  We prepared ourselves for the 12 hour ride from Nampula City to Cuamba, a city in Niassa province where the train ends and, conveniently, Zackaria, a volunteer from our group, lives. 

Adam on the nice train

The train has both second and third class tickets; third class they cram in way too many people, so we opted for the second class tickets which guarantee no more than 6 people in a room/compartment.  There are two trains which alternate going to or from Nampula, the nice one and the not so nice one.  Fortunately on the way there, we got the nice train (not so lucky on the way back, though).  In second class, the nice train has 6 beds, three on each wall for individuals to have their own space to lie down and rest.  We got even luckier as there were only three of us in our room, so we didn’t even need to put up the other beds.  (The not so nice train only has two beds which serve as benches for sitting on.)  The bathroom on the train was a metal toilet that simply had a hole all the way through the floor so that you just left your mark on the tracks below.  Gross yes, requires some balancing skills, but better than nothing.

Like an American train, this train makes many stops along the way, but it goes so so slow, reaching a maximum velocity of about 30mph.  It’s a beautiful ride through the landscapes of Mozambique, but you can imagine it gets pretty hot and 12 hours is a long time to be stuck on a swaying, rocking train.  Though it is much more comfortable than a chapa! 

Along the way, the train stops and people rush up to the windows to sell various items like bread, bags of tomatoes, onions, beans, and sodas.  If you’re brave, you can try the street food like fried chicken, goat meat, hard-boiled eggs, cashews, fried potatoes or bags of cabbage salad.

View from the train

At about hour 10 of our ride, we looked out the window to see the greatest number of mangos I have ever seen in my life, then that number multiplied by about 1000.  It is beginning to be mango season here, but neither I nor Adam was prepared for the ridiculous amount of mangos this little village was trying to sell.  Hundreds of people were walking around with buckets filled with over 100 mangos balanced on their heads, selling the entire bucket for a mere 10mts!  I don’t even know what one does with that many mangos!  It was incredible.

Finally, we made it to Cuamba around 5pm, sore, achy, and so happy to finally get off the train.  It was a cool thing to do once, but not something I need to do again anytime soon.  

Wedding, Hooligans, and Halloween

Through the powers of technology, from the other side of the world, I was able to see my new sister-in-law walk down the aisle and I was a part of my big brother’s wedding ceremony.  It was a bundle of every type of emotion watching them saying their vows and then being passed around the reception talking to friends and family members all gathered together, being a part of it but also reinforcing the fact that I wasn’t actually there.  Still though, pretty amazing that I was able to see it all, despite it being 3am my time.  Definitely worth the lack of sleep.

Unfortunately, some interesting occurrences happened while I was away from my house that weekend.  I had left my neighbor to watch over things while both I and Adrienne were travelling.  I’m still not entirely sure what unfolded that Saturday night, but I came home to a hole in the wall of my bedroom.  After talking with my neighbor, I have formulated my own idea of what perhaps happened.

Apparently he returned to the house, encountering five guys on the premises.  They proceeded to fight each other and then everyone ran away.  I think he must have returned right as they had just gotten inside my house because nothing was taken, very fortunate for me.  All in all, things could have been much worse and improvements have been made on my house since then, making things a little harder for them if they decide to come back.  Still, a little disconcerting though.  Unfortunately, even after a year of being here, some people still see my skin color and associate it with having a lot of money and expensive things.

On a more happier note, the school year is officially over and I have some free time now to relax and do some travelling.  I spent Halloween in Angoche dressed as a butterfly, forming the wings with a brightly colored capulana and some black paint.  This week two volunteers from the new group are doing site visits here in Murrupula.  It is a strange feeling thinking back to being in their place just a year ago and answering all their questions, trying to show them an idea of what life is like for a volunteer here.  In a couple weeks, I’ll be heading down to help out at their training, but first a train trip to Lake Malawi! (more to come soon J )