Vivendo em Moçambique: February 1, 2013

Liz and I are still having a lot of difficulty with our director. The main problem, at the moment, is that our house still is not even close to being done. We are still missing mosquito netting on our windows, I don’t have the keys to my bedroom, our walls need to be repainted, and we still don’t have our own bathroom! Our director promised us a bathroom within two weeks of moving it and it’s been two months. We’ve been using the communal bathroom with all the other teachers. It’s getting really annoying and inconvenient. We can’t really do much else with our house until our bathroom is made. Peace Corps made a deal with our director that they would pay for the materials if the school paid for the labor. Now, all of the materials are bought but nothing still has been done, of course. A couple weeks ago we told the man in charge of the dorms that Peace Corps already paid the school so they installed a grate on our front door. The man who did it, however, still has not been paid. I feel so bad but Liz and I really don’t want to start paying for this out of pocket. Everyone already thinks we have a ton of money and it’s the school’s responsibility to get the work done. There has been some progress though. We finally have a front grate and the other day they spent a few hours tossing giant slabs of concrete into our backyard.

The chunks of concrete with our solar panel off to the side. We would be completely cut off from the world without it. Thanks again Nick :)

We’ve had a lot of success with our basil planting endeavor though! I brought a few small sweet basil seeds from back home and we were able to get about 8 shoots of them growing! We didn’t want to plant them in the backyard yet (still not 100% sure where the bathroom is going and we didn’t want our plants to be crushed by flying concrete) so we turned one of our basins into a temporary pot. Anna had three giant basil plants in her yard as well and we took two sprigs of it home with us. I left them in water for a little over four days and they started producing roots! They are all doing pretty well so far (except for the basil that got eaten by a worm) and hopefully we can plant them in a vegetable garden soon! We want to try growing other plants to and would love to take any seeds if anyone wants to send some, especially sunflowers. Thanks everyone! Hope all is well!