So this is only my 4th day in Namaacha and yet I feel like I have been here for so long! Time moves a lot slower here than I am used to, and daily chores that seem ridiculous in the states (like hand washing clothes and boiling, then cooling, then filtering your water before you can drink it) feel almost relaxing here. I decided to start typing my blog every few nights even though I don’t have internet because almost everything I have done in the last few days is a completely new experience.
Moz 20 group
Day 1...I don’t know how to describe life here in Mozambique short of saying it feels like I am in a movie! Women carrying giant baskets on their heads, people washing clothes in a dirty stream, it feels like I am in one of those commercials about sponsoring a child. I still can't believe I am actually here! It was rough the first day I will admit, really rough. My toilet is just a hole in the ground in the middle of a cement room. I would be completely fine with this and was completely expecting it, except for when night came. I walked out to use the bathroom just before bed. I brought my lantern along because by about 6:30pm it is pitch black here (by the way the stars are nothing short of amazing here!). There is a doorway to the bathroom that is covered with a sheet hanging down acting as a door. So I am walking really slowly, half hunched over and turning my head at any little sound thinking about all the blogs I read with spider stories and such. When I made it to the door (which by the way the bathroom is outside and around the corner from the main part of the house) there was the biggest cockroach I have ever seen chillin right by where I needed to grad the sheet to pull it out. I paused for a second, took a breath and pulled the sheet back. This made me really leery so I stepped up into the room ever so slowly, one foot at a time, shinning my lantern in ever direction before making my way inside completely. I take another breath, tell myself I got this, and made my way over to the hole. Then I see them. An entire clan of cockroaches bigger than the one at the door lining the entire inside of the hole. Literally EVERYWHERE!! I turned around right then and there and headed back into the house.
My house...pictures of the bathroom will come soon!
About five steps out of the bathroom I decided you know what, I just have to do it there is no way around it and the sooner I get over the fear the better. So I turned back around and headed back into the room. It took me what felt like 10 minutes to strategize how to go about peeing into the hole without cockroaches crawling on me. Keep in mind this is only my second time peeing into the hole and it is a bit of an art positioning yourself in a way that you won’t get pee on yourself. All I kept imagining is pee splashing on the cockroaches and them reacting by all running out of the hole onto my feet. I also had to figure out where to put the lantern so I could see what was going on with the cockroaches as I was peeing. Oh yeah I forgot to explain that this hole I keep talking about is raised up. Imagine a square block of cement that raises to about 8 inches or so off the ground (like a step but just one square in the middle of the room). Then within the raised square is a square hole. So you only have a space about 5 inches wide to place your foot. So it is a bit of an art getting the process down.
Being dropped off into a house full of strangers, speaking a language you don’t know at all, in a country you never imagined yourself going to is an indescribable feeling. By the end of my first day I was laying in bed thinking what did I get myself into?!
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