just a recap

Written March 12, 2013

Morning all! It’s a cloudy and rainy, yet lovely Tuesday morning here in good old Quissico. I’ve got my coffee, oatmeal (with a touch of peanut butter thrown in) and some good music to start my day. Its been chilly here the past few days, rainy and overcast – I have been loving it. It’s such a glorious change from the constant heat and sun.

So this past weekend was much more laid-back than the one before, Friday night I traveled to the next town north (Inharrime) to visit a very good friend. We spent the night cooking, watching a movie, cutting my hair, and playing with our respective “babies”, I had brought Lua with me. It was exactly what I needed after a terrible week. Relaxing time spent with a very good friend here. I don’t know what my life would be like here without her – I literally turn to her for just about everything. She’s an incredible woman who is going to do great things with her life. Lookout world.

I headed home the next day, making it back to Quissico just in time for the heavens to open up and start the rain that would last all through the weekend and into this morning. Sunday was pretty uneventful, I hung around the house, composed some emails, looked into grad school programs, talked with people from home a bit - my best friend finally got “whatsapp” – a free texting application that uses data, and doesn’t cost to text/talk internationally. It literally made my day when she texted me.

That evening I went to meet the new JICA volunteer in town for dinner. Nice guy, hes a bit older than Sota is – almost 40yrs old. He is still very very uncomfortable with life here in Mozambique. I introduced him around town Monday after work at the hospital, took him to some of my favorite people in town- and we did some shopping for his house (plates/silverware etc) afterwards I made us lunch here at my house. Compared to his beautiful house, mine is just another hut made out of sticks. . .  but that’s basically what it is haha. But it was a nice time spent together, we communicate in broken English, as his Portuguese is about as good as mine was when I got to site (aka- terrible) and we make do. Its defiantly not going to be the same type of relationship as Sota and I had – grabbing drinks and cooking together, but hopefully it will be a nice friendship.

Work is finally starting to show some progress – I’m working on getting this big Moringa project started at the hospital, getting one of my CBO’s involved . . . its taking a lot of time, but you know what they say “what takes a week in America, takes 3 months in Africa” or something like that. Either way, I believe it.

So the remainder of this week will be spent working on this project, being at the hospital, and trying to get my REDES group up and running again. I’ll be a bit busy!

xo - t