Functionality

Our team leader made a true observation in our first month. "When you first arrive in this country, you work for the house. After a while the house starts working for you." :)

A few days after we arrived in Mozambique, our lovely single swivel kitchen tap/faucet started leaking A LOT of water. Nate spent heaps of time searching every hardware shop in town seeking a new washer. No one had one. Every shop owner informed Nate that he needed to buy a whole new tap. When all other options were up, Nate finally purchased a new faucet. It looked nice, but was, as Nate put it, "a piece of junk". While Nate was trying to attach the lovely shiny new tap it broke in four different places. Not exactly quality material! So swivel taps don't seem to be an option in this part of the country. Finally, Nate put together some spare parts to make this little beauty. Functionality over aesthetics. Gotta love it.

Women's conference in the bush

Two weekends ago I was able to go out with three other women on my team to a women's conference in the bush. About 150 women came from around the area, some walking a day to be there, to sit around The Word and fellowship. 

This was the drive out there

On the drive out to the conference.

The leaf covered enclosures were our shower and our toilet

This was our shower - one of the nicest I've used in the bush. It had banana stalks to stand on and a tunnel underneath to drain the water out.

This was our toilet.

This is where we slept, behind the church building. The other women slept on mats inside the church.

This is an old termite hill next to the church.

This is the kitchen where our meals where cooked (over open fires).

Here is where the traveling women set up their kitchens to cook their food.

Some banana trees loaded with fruit out the front of the church.

This is where we had our meetings.

Here are some samples of the singing and music. Unfortunately I must have covered up the speaker in the 2nd clip, but you get a taste of the dancing we enjoyed.

Fish on Friday

This is the story about two almost clueless people trying to make their way in a new country :) It was the Friday afternoon of Family S's second week in Mozambique. Dad and Mum had completed their first full week of language classes and were feeling the brain strain. Their baby girl, Lilah, had been badly sick for their two weeks in their new home so Mum, being, tired, pregnant and worried had trouble talking to their two afternoon guests without crying. Mum had already employed a lady to help with house work while full time language studies were underway, but being in an emotional state, sent her house worker, her empregada, home early. Suddenly, some carpenters rang to say they would arrive any minute to put up some shelves. Two men came and began working away with loud drills and sawing and banging, much to the delight of Lilah and their oldest daughter, Eliana. 

Finally the carpenters finished their work, which was of very good quality. However, cleaning wasn't part of the carpenters' job so the house was filled with sawdust and scrap bits of wood. Mum suddenly started to regret sending her empregada home early :) Then, Dad and Mum had a great idea. A drive out in the fresh air with the setting sun and then a trip to the local nighttime fish market to buy some fish for dinner. First they made a quick trip to another family's house who were out of town but who said Dad and Mum could pick up their internet from outside. So Dad parked the car and did a few internet jobs while Mum sat in the back with two wiggly, squirmy girls, swatting at the mosquitoes that were freely entering their car in the twilight of night.

Next, Family S made it to the fish market and were immediately met by market sellers who were aggressively attempting to sell their catches of the day. Dad and Mum started to realise that they didn't know much about types of fish, how to clean them or good prices so they blindly bought a bunch of 10 fresh fish and returned home.
Upon arriving home, Dad and Mum managed to zap a potato in the microwave for their two tired girls. The girls went to bed. Amidst the sawdust that was still spread everywhere, Dad and Mum attempted to gut and clean the fish. After massacring two fish beyond edibility Dad and Mum started to wonder if the fish market on such a crazy day was a good idea after all :)

Then Dad, the hero of our story, took his portuguese skill, the rest of the fish and a knife onto the dark street in order to seek the help of some passerby. He quickly found the guard of a Mozambican family down the road who was willing to show Dad how to gut and clean a fish Mozambican style (scales off, guts out, eat everything else). Dad drew quite a crowd and amidst answering the crowd's questions of why his empregada or wife wasn't cleaning the fish, was able to learn to gut fish Mozambican style. Dad left 5 fish with the family of the guard then returned home victoriously with 3 fish for dinner. Mum fried those fish like their was no tomorrow then Dad and Mum finally slumped themselves into some chairs and ate what they could out of the fish at 9pm. After cleaning up as much of the sawdust and woodscraps that their energy allowed Dad and Mum at last crawled into bed. It had been a long time since they had looked forward to a Saturday morning sleep in with so much enthusiasm :)

Around our neighbourhood

Here is a park near the river. Green grass is a rarity in Mozambique, and always refreshing.

This is a typical pathway. We are the only ones I've seen so far who navigate the streets with a pram, though.

If you look closely below, you can see a lady carrying a basket on her head and a baby on her back. That is the normal transport for babies around here. I wore Lilah on my back the other day and a lady told us we should employ her to carry our babies so that I wouldn't have to do work :)

This is the local rubbish truck.

Here is our local rubbish bin. It has just been emptied by the garbage men shovelling the rubbish into a trailer. There is a family of ducks, some chickens, and some street dogs that love to hang around the rubbish area.

This is our street.

Here is a local well where the women and children from our neighborhood fetch their water.

Here is our apartment building.

Our apartment is the one painted yellow.

Here is the driveway that we share with another family. That's the truck that our company generously provided for us.

Pancakes without power

Nate made pancakes this morning but halfway through the batch, the power cut off. Thankfully, we have a gas stove, so it all turned out alright :)

Without power, we decided to take our first venture to a cafe for our first coffee out. However, the power was out in most of the city so coffee was not an option today.

We decided to share a bottle of coke and a couple of custard cakes. Not a bad replacement :)