January 11, 2013

Happy New Years everyone! I have not had access to electricity since Christmas and boy is it an adjustment. I’ve actually been journaling a lot but didn’t bring my journal with me to Montepuez. I’m in Montepuez now by the way! Anna’s roommate has been a volunteer here for a year now and was on vacation the past few times we’ve visited. We are finally meeting more of the volunteers in our province too, which is pretty cool! They are all very nice and friendly. I feel so lucky. It’s been raining in Mariri these past few days so we haven’t been able to use the solar panel to charge my phone. 

Guess what happened to Elizabeth and I when we got back from Pemba… we found out that our house was broke into! We completely weren’t expecting it at all. Our director had called me the night before and tried telling me what had happened but I didn’t understand him. Finally, on the 27^th, we got back and our chief of the dorms got angry at us for not telling him that we were traveling for Christmas. He then proceeded to show us what happened to our kitchen window. Someone had knocked out the concrete around our metal bars and pulled back our metal bars and broke our window. Thankfully, we had locked the door of our kitchen before we left and the door to the cupboards so they only stole the things we had lying around our kitchen, not our rooms. Our two kitchen knives from the US were gone, along with my headlamp, leatherman, Liz’s face wash, and our gas stove. We were really grateful that it wasn’t worse. Apparently, another man got everything stolen from him (food, clothes) and someone else noticed three chickens missing. It was only after all this happened that they told us more thieves are around during the holidays. Thanks guys. They fixed the concrete on the window a couple hours later. 

A picture of our window after they re-cemented the grate back into place. 

The scarier thing happened to us a couple days later. I was sound asleep (I sleep like a rock!) when I woke up to Liz’s voice saying, “Jamie. I think someone is trying to break into our house.” Me: “!?!?!”. Liz said she heard someone banging on the grates. I grabbed my lamp but didn’t turn it on and the air horn. We both stood at the door to our kitchen for a couple minutes and then shone our light in the windows. Liz, then, through the lid of our metal water filter on the floor to scare them away and to let them know that there were people inside. After that, I went back to bed but just as I was tucking my net into the bed, Liz said she heard someone walking outside her windows. We both huddled on her bed (under the mosquito net. Hiding from those mosquitoes!) until midnight just to be safe. I stayed awake until 2 but then fell asleep. Nothing else happened that night, thank goodness, but we told Peace Corps what happened and, a day later, we got a personal guard. He sleeps on a mattress outside our door with a catana (a type of sword people use here). He’s paid to stay with us until school starts. We have a lot of students who live in the dorms so apparently people are less likely to try to steal from people when more people are around. Also, we might get a kid to stay in our hallway while we travel away from home from now on. Children are a cheap resource here and probably the most efficient type of alarm system we could get. We’ll see what happens I guess!

Liz and I are also trying to grow plants. We cut three soda cans and planted basil, cilantro, and oregano. We bought a spray bottle (that broke three days later) and have some plants that are growing! Not sure if they are weeds or not but we’re pretty excited to have living things in our house. Apparently the cat that Anna adopted is a girl and is pregnant! We hope we can get a cat soon to get rid of our bugs/rodents. 

Our soda cans sitting in our kitchen window. 

Our water is disgusting. It’s chalky and whenever we boil it, salt crashes out of it. It tastes absolutely disgusting, though, so we get super excited when it rains. We bring out all our buckets/containers to collect “sweet” tasting water. Do you know what tastes worst than our nasty water though? Water with rehydration salts. Liz and I got sick the other day (Yes, we got the same sickness at the same time. We are now the same person. It’s really funny. People only know us as Jamie or Elizabeth and we always hang out together. We’re basically married lol). When we were switching out our nasty well water with clean rain water, we only had enough to fill our nalgene water bottles. I didn’t want to drink gross water so I suggested we put tea in it. Worst idea I’ve had in a very long time. Tea was the only thing we drank that day and by the afternoon I was getting a headache. We watched “Midnight in Paris” that afternoon while giving ourselves a pedicure and by the end I think I had a migraine. Crazy, I never realized until now that I might have migraines! But the pain was unbearable. I took two cinnamon tortillas with me to bed, ate one, then woke up after two hours feeling nauseous and dehydrated, tried walking to the water filter only using the light on my watch because the light hurt my eyes, failed, and had to ask Liz for help. I am so glad she is my roommate. I would have been in much worse shape without her. She took my temperature (I had a fever), gave me a wet towel and sarong, and brought me bleach water to drink. By the next day, we both had painful headaches that hurt when we bent down and sensitivity to light. I was feeling better during the day but by night I was not in good shape again. Another fever and the cigarette smoke from the guard outside my room was making me more nauseous. I chugged the rehydration salts, finally fell asleep sitting up, and woke up much better the next morning! Liz was still out that day though. She had a high fever and our medical doctor made her take a malaria rapid test. We didn’t think we had malaria because we both got sick at the same time but it was definitely a relief to officially know that it wasn’t malaria. 

Collecting water outside! 

It was pretty funny to hear what the doctor told Liz to do, though, because she was sick. The first time she called, Liz was told to take a warm shower. First of all, we don’t have a shower. Second of all, it takes so much time and effort to heat water that we only take cold bucket baths. After that, the doctor told Liz to eat bread with butter. The closest place we can buy bread is 17km away from us. If only we could eat bread! It was just so interesting because the doctors that we call are Mozambican too but the live in Maputo, the capitol of Mozambique. There is such a big difference between the lives people lead in the cities and out in the bush or “Mato.” I guess Liz and I are getting the “real” Peace Corps experience. 

The day after, we were both finally better! We no longer had an excuse not to go to “work” so we “helped” the rest of the week. We are no longer helping with the official grades for 10^th grade. Now, we are helping register students here at the school. There are two pedagogical directors. One is a man, Jeronimo, who is pretty crazy and blind but hilarious and nice. The other director’s name is Juliana. She is a tough woman who has a lot of respect from the people of our community. I helped Jeronimo write receipts for the students while Elizabeth helped Juliana. I think I learned a lot of Portuguese while I was helping but I also felt that most of what we did was a waste of time. It would have been much easier and faster if they had a better system down. But that’s not how it works here in Mozambique. Just another thing we need to get use to. But we were rewarded the other day for staying for so long! Our “snack” came at around 2 in the afternoon. It consisted of fresh bread (we hadn’t had bread in days!), eggs (we hadn’t had eggs since Christmas!), a cold soda (we no longer have a refrigerator so drinking anything cold on a hot day is delicious!), and a cold juice! Completely worth it. I also like Fanta drinks now. Oh how my standards have changed over the past few months.

The kids that live here in Mariri are adorable. They come by our house and try talking to us in the local language (Macua). Some of them speak Portuguese, which is great for us. They bring us mangos a lot. One day, because there were only a few of them, I brought out some chalk and we drew pictures outside our house. It was really cute and we learned how to say cat (pakha) and chicken (calakhu) in Macua. 

Liz drawing with the kids (criancas). 

Mariri is still beautiful though. We’ve had gorgeous sunsets these past couple days. I posted a few pictures for you to see: 

 The view outside our door of the gap between the abandoned church and girl dorm room. 

 The view outside our window. You can see the fence of our yard. 

 Pretty sunset.

Also, (finally!) here is my new address. Nampula is a lot closer to my new home so please use this instead!

Irma Jamie Simmons (PCV)

Rua Dar-Es_Salaam, nr. 14

Bairro Central, Caixa Postal 526

Nampula, Mozambique

I would love to have any kind of food and seasonings. Ramen, taco seasoning, mustard seeds, seseame oil, anything asian, anything that is instant (like powdered miso soup). Also, if/when you send a package, please put lots of religions stickers or drawings on it. People are less likely to steal from a religious package because people have respect/are scared of God. Also Irma means “sister.” I’m now pretending to be a nun :) Love you all. Stay well!