Site Delivery

It has been a week since site delivery. I am officially at site. My town has two names: you may find it called one on some maps or in the name of the secondary school, but on other maps, or on the entry signs it is called something else (very different). I’ve yet to get a good explanation about why there is confusion, it has been vaguely explained as some linguistic disconnect between the Portuguese and the original inhabitants (by Dio) and the fact that it is a district capital. But the names come from two mountains (more like huge huge rocks…. don’t think mount hood) next to the town.

The house is in much better condition than I thought it would be. Two plus bedroom, bright paint colors. Nothing fancy, but comfortable. Hole in the ground latrine… guess I’ll be working on those thigh muscles.

When I got to site I was greeted by Dio (soon to be 17 yr old, who gets room and board for helping out around the house, he is a wonderful person and extremely honest/thoughtful… he called me his “new American mom” on day one. So guess that’s the first time I’ve been called “mom”…. I don’t know if I’m mature enough) and some girls from the neighborhood. They sang a greeting song and had hung little welcome notes around the house. Made my day… especially after a rather long day of travel to get to site (our chapa was unauthorized to leave our city of departure, so we had to wait for it to go get proper paperwork before we could actually get anywhere).

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Today I had to pay the electric bill. Easy enough. Right? Imagine: 20+ people crammed into a small area, three of them are with suckling babes (there is no personal space difference when it comes to nursing… anytime, anywhere, even if you are pressed up against other people), no deodorant, 150 degrees F and really high humidity. Even though there was quite a lot of space to spread out—even form a line (astounding!)--everyone pushed up against each other at the window to pay, there was a women’s and a men’s line (more like mobs) and the office would alternate between the sexes, slowly printing out receipts. I guess lines are a cultural thing, I kind of miss them. While I was trying to assert myself and trying not to step on any kids, one women (nursing while working her way through, pressed up on everyone else) did the standard hiss/hand flick motion – Mozambiquan beckoning-- granted it still takes me a little while to register the gesture I couldn’t figure out how she wanted me to get any closer to her… I was right up in there with her baby, nipple, and everything. Well it turned out she wanted my money and bill, so she passed it up with hers when she got to the window. Again part of the way it is done. People kept coming up passing bills/money to their friends waiting in line. I am glad she helped me out, I would have probably drowned in the crowd. Receipt printed and I was outta there.

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Tonight, we were getting low on water, but it rained. Luckily. We filled up buckets and watched the neighborhood fill with smoke. A cane house down the street caught on fire, maybe electrical maybe a cooking fire—though the owners said (through the grapevine) they had put everything out. It’s still smoking now but I think (hope) the rain will keep it from getting too far.

There is something precarious about filling up basins in a lightening storm. I know they say don’t stand in puddles go swimming—I just don’t know if it counts if you are holding a contained mini body of water. Either way, with the smoke in the air, fire on the mind, I kept getting paranoid and would stop filling up buckets when the lightening got especially bright or the thunder particularly loud.

(Written 12/21/09)