Christmas festivities

Merry Christmas, Happy Boxing Day, and Happy New Year!

Just spent a very nice Christmas with about 15 other PCVs at Shannon and Allison´s site. Very relaxing, although it is somewhat surreal to be lying on a beautiful beach in the hot sun in the middle of summer and think, It´s Christmas. We did a gift exchange, and I had the AWESOME wrapped xmas present from mummy that arrived last month to open, so I was a pretty happy camper. Plus I bought myself a whole bunch of wooden bracelets, and some ebony sculptures that I thought were funny. They are three little monkeys carved into see no evil, speak no evil and hear no evil. So, 16 pieces of jewelery, three monkeys and 100 meticais (about 4 dollars) later, and I was happy. The series of pineapples that I proceeded to consume after this continued the happiness. Throw in some fresh swordfish, and shrimp and a few dozen sanddollars and life is pretty tranquil. How very relaxing it is to have electricity for a few days, and to be able to cook after sunset (6pm) with lights on and and electric stove, in a town where the market has more than three ingredients to cook with :)

There are a lot of things that I will not take for granted when I get back to the U.S. It´s amazing how privileged we are. A lot of people have asked me about the lack of fruits and vegetables in my town. My school director says people are lazy and don´t want to grow things, but I think the bigger issue is water. When you have to carry all the water you use on your head from a communal tap in the center of town, it´s an effort just to get enough for drinking, cooking, bathing and cleaning, let alone watering a garden! I´m going to try to plant myself a little garden in pots (as i will be moving sometime in the future my garden should be portable), so we´ll see what I manage to grow for myself.

In addition to my garden I will have a lot of projects when I get back to site. I bought a bunch of tools (saw, hand drill, drill bits, screws, bunchings, nails, hooks and all kinds of fun things) so when I get some wood (apparently available at site) I can get to work on the things I want for my house, starting with a closet, and followed by shelves and tables. Not things you can buy in my town, and a bit tricky to transport, so some creativity is required. Fortunately I have lots of free time, and there are only so many hours a day I can read. Hardware store proprietors in Mozambique are very amused by me. I think they get a kick of the little foreign girl trying to build things in their country. It doesn´t help my credibility that all the words for tools in my dictionary are wrong....but they smile at me when we finally find the right thing and give me great discounts. Speaking of tools, a great tragedy has occurred. Somewhere between homestay and site my Leatherman disappeared. I spent a few frantic hours unpacking and repacking my suitcases at site (all my stuff is still in my bags, as i have no shelves, tables, closets to unpack into...), but to no avail. Heartbroken. I loved my Leatherman. It was a wonderful, beautiful thing, and now it is gone, alas. Fortunately I have screwdrivers on my swiss army knife, but it´s not quite the same. I won´t give up hope entirely until I really unpack, but this will be after i build myself some furniture, so it may be a while.

Another tragedy was fixed though. There was a period of two days in which my portable CD player stopped working. No music for two days. This is particularly tragic when it is what helps you fall asleep because it blocks out the sound of rats squeaking. But through some great miracle it decided to fix itself, and has been working perfectly for the last week. Phew. I am actually rather impressed by it´s energy saving capacities. I listen to a CD a night practically every night, and I´ve only used four AA batteries. Pretty amazing.

Tomorrow we head off on public transport to the beach near Jorge and Zach´s site for New Years, which should be a lot of fun. I´ll be taking advantage of the fresh seafood and electricity while I can!

It just started raining here. We love rain, and clouds, and just about anything that brings the temperature down and hides the blazing sun. I just hope this doesn´t close Nampula´s central market....I wanted to buy more fruits and vegetables while i have the opportunity. Is a 3rd pineapple in the space of two days too much for one person.....?

Ok, sorry this was so rambling. There is a reason that I usually write these ahead of time......

Special thanks to my lovely email writers: mummy, daddy, uncle jon, aunty judy, miss marie and trev.
Letter writers and package senders thanks to you too, and i´ll find out who you are in a few months :)

Love to all,

Laura

The Ups and Downs of Life in Nampula

Oy! Only 16 minutes of internet left!!!! Here goes:

Things we were told we would have:
-electricity
-very close water source or even running water
-a GREAT fruit and vegetable market
-a wood market
-a short term temp house until our house is finished

Things we actually have:
-None of the above
-May be getting a generator, but they are not very powerful, loud and smelly
-We pay to have water carried from about 1/4 mile away (3 buckets = 1.5 miles round trip)
-no wood market
-BLATANT lack of fruit and veg (market has mango, onion, garlic, a few puny tomatoes, and.....dried fish. Throw in bread rice and beans, and imagine this as the extent of your cooking resources. Oy.
-Temp house for at least 6 months because our house is nowhere near done

Other things we have:
-large cockroaches
-dead rat (my bedroom)
-live rat (kitchen)
-scorpions (small and not too dangerous, so don't worry too much)

Nice things:
-beautiful, glorious mCell tower in the middle of my town, so i have CELL PHONE service. This is the only thing keeping me sane, so keep the texts and calls coming.
-our temp house has a TILE roof from the Portuguese era so it is MUCH cooler than a tin roof.
-Nice verandah
-Very proactive school director who considers our happiness and safety his number 1 priority
-Very cool NGO neighbors "medicus mundi" with doctors from Italy, Spain and Russia
-Our temp and permanent houses are in the safest part of town
-We will probably be able to go to Pemba and Nampula regularly to buy fruits and veg.

You know your life has changed when:
-You get up between 4 and 5 every day because you can't imagine sleeping later than that, plus it's the nicest part of the day
-You start sweating at 6:30
-You and your roommate are SHOCKED by how LATE you are up at 8:45
-You habitually go to bed at 8pm
-You go to a supermarket in city for the first time in four months and feel dizzy and overwhelmed

Things that i am called in my town:
Laura (pronounced LOW-RAH)
Laurinha (little Laura)
Menina (girl)
A Senorha Professora (the lady professor)
Doctora (title for someone who has finished univerisity)
Mama
Mana (big sister)
Tia (aunt)
Colega (colleague)
Lots of names for one person!!

Did manage to get to Pemba the other day. Very pretty. Has FRUIT AND VEGETABLES AND FRESH FISH. Very exciting. Sadly there is only one bus a day, which doesn't come back until the next day, so this may be problematic. We shall see.

Am in Nampula with a pack of Volunteers today. We're heading off to spend Christmas and New Years together on the coast with even more volunteers. Should be lots of fun. At the crazy supermarket today I splurged and bought: peanut butter, nutella, apricot jam and olive oil. Oh the happiness.

Ok, that's about it for now.

Love to all, and best wishes for a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!

p.s. still haven't figured out the best place for a P.O. Box up north, but for now you can still send stuff to the Maputo box, and Peace Corps will get them to me eventually.... : )

Officially a PCV!

Hi All,

I am now officially a PCV! We swore in today, and listented to a bunch of speeches at the Ambassador´s house (although the US is currently between ambassadors), and then had a nice reception on this very very hot day. We are now using our last free afternoon to walk around maputo and eat lots of ice cream.

Tomorrow is a BIG DAY ie. Moving Day. At 3:45 tomorrow morning we go to the airport and fly up to Nampula city. The plane isn´t big enough for everyone, so our supervisors will fly in a couple hours after us. Then we´ll rent chapas, or take school vehicles (which apparently my school has!), and head off to our new homes! We know a little bit more about site, since we´ve had two days to ask questions at the Supervisor´s Conference. We did discover that both water and electricity are a problem in our town, so there may not be a fan in my future....sad. Ah well, I´ll survive--I just have to think back to the mudhut that I had first imagined for my peace corps experience. How spoiled I have become.

Those of you who have been concerned about my safety will be happy to know that my school director is thinks security is very important, and has hired a guard for our house. This will be particularly nice when we go visit other volunteers for Christmas--it will give us a lot of peace of mind when leaving site. Another nice discovery is that we will only be around 2 hours from Pemba, the capital of Cabo Delgado province, so we will be able to do internet-banking-post office there instead of in our province. Much closer. Once I get up there we will set up a post office box, and i´ll get that info to you. You can still send stuff to my old address in the peace corps office (tho PCV and not PCT now!), and it will be forwarded to me, but this will be significantly delayed.

I just gave a large stack of Christmas letters with US stamps to Josh, one of the Volunteers going home for Christmas. He goes the 21st, so my letters should be in domestic mail soon after than, and hopefully in your mailboxes between Christmas and New Years. If you didn´t send me your address, you´re probably not getting a letter. Sorry. Did the best I could. Find a friend who got a letter and share : )

Special thanks to my current letter writers: Trev, Laura, Uncle Jon and Aunty Marie
Package sender: Mummy, you are AMAZING--four packages with 17 new books! I will single handedly keep the North supplied with books! Am now set with books for a few months, so maybe a few edibles could meander my way, hint hint : )
Emailers: Ira, Marie, Uncle Jon, Mummy and Daddy, Penny and Emily

Should give someone else a chance to use the internet. Love and miss you all. Enjoy the lovely cold weather (whoever thought I would be longing to be COLD!?), and think of me sweating in Nampula surrounded by mangos and cashews!