You know you are in the Peace Corps when it’s 7:30 PM on a weekend night and you are eating dinner alone, by candlelight, and that after dinner you will probably take a cold bucket bath, read a little or watch a TV show and then be in bed by 9. I guess I’m not techinally alone because Amendoim is sitting right beneath my chair but still, all this alone time is nice but it does take some getting used to.
Today was pretty eventful, I woke up around 7 (that is LATE!) and while eating some bread on my front porch a visitor stopped by to come chat, his name was Junior and he was definitely drunk. He used to be a teacher and knew some of the previous PCVs in Guija, and he spoke great English so I chatted with him a little but then told him I was busy. He promised to come back later in the day so we could talk. Shortly after he left a kid ran into my yard and said ‘consensa mana, consensa…cobra!” I didn’t really understand what he was actually saying but I caught the word cobra and got nervous, he was afraid to come in my yard because of my dog so I put amendoim inside and then walked out to meet him and asked him if there was a snake, he said yes, and I asked where, he said the trees…well my yard has a lot of trees.
So I got my neighbors to come help and sure enough we spotted the snake that had scared this boy and it was HUGE. Not only was it a big guy, 4 or 5 feet he was also fat and everyone was terrified of him. By now there was a nice-sized crowd gathered in my yard staring at the snake. I started to feel uncomfortable standing outside in my running shorts (totally inappropriate) because lots of people were all dressed up as they were coming from church. Aside from feeling awkward I was anxious to prove to my neighbors that I was not scared of the cobra and asked if I could kill it by throwing a large rock at it, one of my neighbors nodded. I walked closer to my house to try and find the perfect rock but then two men came running, literally out of nowhere, and they each had very large sticks…one of them ran right over to the snake, yelled and them BAM slammed the stick down and ended that black cobra’s sad little life. Everyone gasped a little and the guy continued to whack the snake to make sure he was good and dead. Then he picked up to now-dead snake to show everyone and threw it onto a pile of dead weeds. Problem solved, everyone went home, but not before telling me that I needed to cut my front hedges and weed around them.
I already knew I needed to weed these hedges and I actually paid someone to come clean my entire yard last week but there was a clear language barrier (the woman I hired didn’t speak any Portuguese) so somehow my attempt to ask her to trim my hedges and weed under them got lost in the crazy sign language/having another neighbor translate all of my requests into Changana for her. So I was a little reluctant to have to start this large project because I felt like someone else should have done it for me…but yea I didn’t want any more cobras so I got out my wheel barrow, broom and machete and got to work. I did a good hour or so of weeding (the machete was too dull/I am not strong enough to use it to cut hudges) and then the kids that live next door showed up. They didn’t even ask if I needed help they just started raking weeds, picking up branches and the oldest one started whacking away at my hedges.
I was shocked, I kept trying to talk to them in Portuguese and they just smiled but were pretty quiet…I kept thinking that tonight, when I was done, I’d go inside and make them some delicious cookies as a thank you and I could also give them a little money for all their hard work. When we were about halfway through all the work one of the kids asked me if I was going to pay them, I hate talking about money here, especially with kids, because EVERYONE thinks that because I am white (and therefore either American or South African) I must be rich. I was planning on paying the kids for helping but it did sour my mood a little that they just expected it. I told them yes, but also said they had to help me finish and then I would pay them tomorrow. They smiled and got back to work. By the end of the day they had helped me chop away almost all of my front hedge, which was awesome; now it doesn’t exactly look aesthetically pleasing but I could rake out all the dead leaves and weed easily, and it’s a hedge so it will grow back a lot nicer. I am a little bummed because the hedge offered a great buffer between the school and my house and gave me some privacy and now it is completely gone but I’ll take a lack of privacy instead of cobras any day. It was also fun to work outside all day with my neighbors, even if they were motivated by money.
Throughout the day, random neighbors would pass by and say how great it was that I was cleaning my yard. I thought my yard looked good before but people here like things different I guess and now that my front hedge is lower and looks all choppy and weird it apparently looks better. I also learned this week that I HAVE to sweep my yard everyday or my neighbors will really not like me. My front yard is dirt but Mozambicans sweep their front yards, I think its so strange…sweeping dirt? But its okay its brownie points at this point and need to do these little things to be accepted in my community.
Also random fact, by the end of the day I noticed the dead snake was gone and I’m 99% certain someone took it to use for traditional medicine, COOL.
Oh and at around 5 PM Junior came back to visit. He apologized for being drunk this morning and said he wanted to talk. We ended up sitting on my front porch talking for a while IN ENGLISH WAHOOO about Mozambique, America and South Africa. Junior used to teach at the school where I will be working so we talked about teaching and he asked me all about my experience with PC so far. Apparently he was friends with previous volunteers so he knew a lot about the organization. It was so nice to have a real conversation with someone about things in Africa but to be able to speak in English. Guess I have a new friend.
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On a lighter note I will say that Christmas here was so much fun! It was really really hot though, I thought everyone’s sites were hot in Gaza and then my friends came here and told me my site was the hottest. We woke up pretty early each day because it was so hot you couldn’t sleep and slowly everyone would move outside to lay on my straw mats under the big tree in my front yard and just pray for a breeze. Between the hours of 9AM and 4PM it was literally too hot to move, unless you were moving to go get an iced cold refresco (soda). Heat aside it was fun to have people around, we told stories, played cards, wandered around town and made some delicious food. On Christmas we even managed to make a traditional meal with green beans, mashed potatos, chicken (I bought it frozen we weren’t going to kill any chickens at my house) and sweet potatoes. We even had no bake cookies for dessert, wahoo! Overall it was just a great couple of days spent with some friends.
So aside from Christmas things have been pretty slow here. I’ve been doing a lot of work around the house and outside because I am trying to get all these little projects done before school starts, which I am so excited for! These last few weeks have been great, I’ve gotten to relax a ton at my house, I’ve read a couple books, made some good food and overall felt like I was on some weird vacation. I also got to travel a little and visit friends BUT I am ready to start my job and to really start teaching. I am also so anxious to meet people at my school, so hopefully next time I write it wil be about that!
I hope you all had a very merry Christmas/happy holidays and a really fun new years, here’s to 2013 [hopefully] being a year full of lots of adventure and lots of learning and reflection, can’t wait!
Until the next time!
Oh and I should add my new years resolution was to be fluent in Portuguese by next years New Years, think I can do it?
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