It has been quite a long time since I’ve officially updated on my time in Monapo. But things are going great, much better than I ever could have expected during Pre-Service Training! I am still living with the nuns and try to remind myself daily that come mid-November I will no longer have running water or a flushing toilet. Not to mention the delicious meals and desserts the nuns whip up! Still, I am looking forward to having more independence and being able to cook for myself. I have definitely gained weight since coming to Africa, and living with the nuns has not helped in this area! I know I’ll regret thinking this, but I’m looking forward to “tempo de fome” or “time of hunger.” Rumor is, come December, the only produce you’ll find at the market is tomatoes and onions.
I started local language classes with a boy in SCIP’s theater group as my instructor. I’m really trying, and Abel is a great teacher, but Macua is just really tough to learn. I know enough to greet people and introduce myself, and can pick up on words/phrases here and there when people are talking, but that’s about it. And unfortunately, I don’t think I’ll get much better. We just don’t have Macua sounds in English! Or Portuguese!
I spent the month of September working long hours Monday-Friday and enjoying the gorgeous beaches of Nampula province on the weekends! I spent a weekend in Ilha de Moçambique (Mozambique Island) and another weekend in Chocas. Ilha has 2 parts- one in which the locals live, full of mud and straw huts; and the other, the “tourist” side, filled with dilapidated buildings from the Portuguese colonization. You can easily see that Ilha must have been a really beautiful place during the colonization. And parts of it still are quite beautiful, but so much is just run-down. We didn’t spend much time on the beach because it is filled with trash and human waste (the majority of the locals’ houses lack latrines), so our trip was centered mostly around food. This, of course, was absolutely fine by me Ilha has tons of great restaurants with food you can’t find in Monapo- pizza, pasta dishes, lobster, squid, club sandwiches, chocolate cake, etc. You can also get a gin and tonic or a glass of red wine! It was such a treat to eat such delicious food, but also very expensive on a PCV’s budget! Chocas beach was a completely different experience. The town of Chocas is this quaint little beach town with houses owned mainly by ex-pats and wealthy Mozambicans. There is a resort called Carrusca (see photos on my Facebook, if you haven’t already!) that is about 3K from the town. The only things you’ll find by Carrusca are a handful of bungalows, a restaurant, and beautiful, never-ending white sand. It is without a doubt the most beautiful beach I have ever been to. My friend, Caitlyn, and I rented a boat to take us to an island right off of the mainland. The ride out was absolutely terrifying. We even considered what we would do if the boat capsized. I knew I’d be able to swim to shore but was panicking about all of the electronics onboard! Long story short, we made if safely to shore and the experience on that island was well worth the nightmare we went through to get there. We spent hours just walking around collecting shells and staring out into the beautiful turquoise water. Even now as I write this, I cannot believe a place so incredibly untouched exists. They are in the works of building a restaurant on the island (knowing Mozambique it will probably take another 10 years to complete, if ever…and how would they regularly transport supplies, anyway?) but I really hope that never happens! Some places need to be left alone.
While Ilha and Chocas are probably the closest beaches to me, they are also the most expensive. Well, really any beach is expensive because their target populations are tourists or rich Mozambicans on vacation. So I obviously cannot afford to be at the beach every weekend. Nor would I want to because I like spending time in Monapo! We have a soccer field and I went to several games during September. Teams from all over Nampula province come to play. And my supervisor, the coordinator of SCIP Monapo, coaches a “health team” that plays other Monapo rec teams. The experience of a Mozambican soccer game is, oddly enough, very similar to being at a Manheim high school football game. The soccer field is THE place to be while a game is being played. Everyone at the game knows each other and all of the players by name. You can buy snacks to eat during the game- hard boiled eggs and weird little bean cakes. And guards walk in front of the bleachers with huge shotguns. Ok, so not everything is the same.
I am lucky enough to have 2 sitemates- Vonnie, an education volunteer and Megan, the health volunteer that I’m replacing. We also have 2 education volunteers, Jenn and Lauren, in a town about 15 minutes outside of Monapo, called Carapira. So I usually spend my weekend nights with them. Monapo has a few restaurants but we always go to one called Pica Pau. Along with all of the other restaurants in Monapo, Pica Pau serves one thing: Meio Frango (Half a chicken). My sister, Janine, thinks this is the funniest thing but the plate is really good! Half a grilled chicken, French fries, and a cabbage salad. But the whole experience of Pica Pau is really what makes the food so good. We usually go around 5 or 6pm, knowing that our food will show up 2 hours later. We always take card games to play while we are waiting. And when our server brings over a teapot and basin for us to wash our hands we know its only another 5-10 minutes until we have our chicken! But I’m certain the food would still be really good even if you weren’t completely starving.
So that’s pretty much my life. Honestly, things are starting to feel so normal that I just don’t know what to even blog about. Very few things shock me anymore, like they did in the beginning- grown men wearing Hello Kitty T-shirts, infants riding on motorcycles, a woman squatting to pee in a grassy area across from the market, grilled rat for sale on the side of the road, “Justin Beiber” written on the street in chalk, and so many exposed breasts (because of breastfeeding, not lack of clothing). But, I promise to do my best to start doing a better job of taking note of the things that are different here. Also, I apologize if that sentence, or any others, doesn’t make grammatical sense. I rarely write in English anymore!
