Other things I do here, shower by bucket, squat to poop, still struggle giving classes in Portuguese. I do know a good way to make students laugh, trying to pronounce their names during attendance. My mouth does not move in the directions it is needed to for these letters.
Peace Corps Volunteer Richie goes to Mozambique...Uh oh writes: The every day things
Friday, February 27, 2009
The every day things
Everyday Life
As the title says, this entry will talk about everyday life here at site. I actually may have even written about this stuff before but whatever, here it goes again.
First off, everything takes a lot more time then it does in the states. To cook lunch, we need to light up the coal for our stove, which takes a good bit of time. After the coals heat up we are ready to start cooking. We generally do the same meal and that takes us around 25-30 minutes to finish cooking everything minus the 10 minutes of prepping the food.
After eating lunch, the fun starts with dishes. Not having running water just means we need to fill the little basin we own with water and wash our dishes in this. It isn’t too bad, but takes longer then if we had constant running water, and I am not actually to sure how clean our dishes actually get. The water looks pretty disgusting by the time we wash the last few things.
To do the dishes, we need water. Water luckily is easy to get here. We have to walk maybe 100 meters to the pump to get our water and then carry the buckets back. I use this as my excuse of why I do not work out. I get everything I need working the pump and then carrying the water back…I’m lazy.
A few times a week, we need to stock up on food. The market is maybe 2k away, which is not too bad. Some days are better than others when it comes to food. We have 5 main stores we use, Mamma’s store, tomato paste mamma’s store, middle east store, other middle east store and the bakery. All selling close to the equivalent products. We tend to shop at Mamma’s the most for potatoes, eggs, oil and toilet paper. Middle east store has better onions and a lot more of the random specialty items like locks and a bike, stuff like that. Tomato paste mamma doesn’t really have anything. She has a small refrigerator that runs on gas so she has cold soda that is nice. We used to buy tomato paste from her, but then realized every other store has tomato paste. She is a very nice lady though and does errands for us, like she sent her husband out to buy us pinheiras (these straw baskets) which we could not find anywhere.
Other middle east store usually we only go to when the other stores are sold out of stuff. Same generic things we can get elsewhere, but seem to be less friendly to us. Finally, the bakery. I used to like the bakery because we could get bread there. Unfortunately for them, and us at the time, they were the only store with eggs. I bought a dozen and when we decided to cook with them, 7 of the 12 were rotten. They are now on the shit list. “But where will you buy bread?” The new bread place we found last week!
So the new bread place is on the other side of town we never go to because there is really nothing over there. I had a student show me where to buy this bread and it is by far the best bread we can get here. The first few times I went, an older lady was there, but the past couple times a younger woman has been present and I believe she wants to marry me. While I love the compliments, she scares me. The first day I met her, she blocked the door on my way out until I gave her my phone number. I did not give her a fake number due to my thinking, “if she will block the door for my number, I would not put it past her to stab me.” She says she just wants to learn English, but I am convinced she wants me. Sometimes I like to think I am the most attractive person in the world and this is the only explanation of why people talk to me, even in other countries. I have a problem that should probably get looked at, but whatever.
Other things I do here, shower by bucket, squat to poop, still struggle giving classes in Portuguese. I do know a good way to make students laugh, trying to pronounce their names during attendance. My mouth does not move in the directions it is needed to for these letters.
Aside from all this the only thing I have really done is go to the bank. The bank is always a treat because it is far enough away that we have to stay over night at the beach. Tough I know. At the beach though we met up with a lot of volunteers and hung out making bad decisions. Best part about going to the beach was the ride we received. We were on the back of one of those wide load trucks. The truck needed another car with flashing lights in front of it just to let other cars know it was taking up both lanes. I ended up sitting on a spare tire underneath a giant crane. One of those I wish I had a camera moments, but I am forgetful. Was quite a fun ride.
Pretty much my day in the life. I also throw in stuff like studying portuguese doing my best to learn more vocabulary to make life easier. Gets easier everyday.
