Nacaroa

The first week in Nacaroa has been pretty good! I'm in Monopo now visiting some other volunteers and hanging out for the weekend. The market in Nacaroa is pretty small, and right now only has tomatoes, onions, mangos, small potatoes, and rice. And the tomatoes and onions are pretty puny. I was really excited to come here to stock up on food in the big city only to find that they have nothing else right now here either.

My house is really nice! It's pretty big, and it has a screened front porch and an open back porch. I have a large fenced-in yard, and there's a large canopy thing that's in the process of being built now but will be great for reading and lesson planning when it's finished. My director has been great about getting me furniture for my house beyond what Peace Corps requires, and the big news: the generator started working the day I got there, and my director got power lines run to my house on Wednesday, so I have electricity from 6-10 every night!! And next year there should be electricity 24/7, so then I can get a fridge!

I've met several people in the town so far, and have been getting some good Portuguese practice. There seems to be two populations of Nacaroa: the locals that are from there, who are mostly farmers; and the government workers since it's the district capital, who live there during the week but have families and homes elsewhere, mostly Nampula City, and leave on the weekends. World Vision, an American NGO, has an office there so I've met several people that work there. They have some of the few cars/trucks in the town, and I've been able to get rides to the market and elsewhere from them. And since they go home on the weekends I was able to get a ride part-way to Monopo from them in a nice, safe, air-conditioned truck instead of a crowded, sweaty, half-broken chapa. But the chapa driver who took me the rest of the way here was a really great, intelligent Rwandan guy and I had a lot of fun talking with him.

It's been REALLY REALLY hot here. Like so hot I sweat all night and wake up dehydrated just from sleeping. I've been told that it gets "cold" here in the winter, but I have a feeling that there might be a cultural difference in what "cold" is, so I'm not getting my hopes up. But I'm really looking forward to March when it starts to get cooler, and slightly dreading January and February. The school has morning classes for half the students and afternoon classes for the other half because there's not enough classrooms. I'm not sure when I'll be teaching, but it's gonna be really hot there by 10am. The school is nice though. It's new, but there are only 8 real classrooms, and 4 or 5 makeshift ones. 4 or 5 more real ones are in the process of being built though.

I'll be back here for xmas, so I'll probably have another post up soon!