My house etc

My house has a lot of make-shift things. To start, my bookcase is the cardboard box that my oven came in. My spice racks are made from pieces of cardboard that I folded and duct taped to make rectangle boxes, and then used fabric to make strings to hang them from nails on my wall. The nails are actually real nails, hammered in using a rock. My dresser is still my suitcase. I asked for an armoire, but instead my director had the “well thought” idea to change that request and tell the carpenters to make me a coat rack. I will be buying hangars today in Nampula. I had a very nice cornfield in my back yard, but now a have only a so-so cornfield. First, my neighbors had the insight to cut down a tree in their yard, which fell into my yard, which damaged some corn, and they just left their fallen tree there in my way. I say they had the insight to do that, because a few days later a very similar tree that I had in my yard fell over in a rainstorm, damaging even more corn. Oh well, there was way more corn than I would have ever been able to use anyway.
So last weekend a woman showed up at my house. “Do you know how to make matapa?” she asked me. I didn’t. “Ok when do you want to come make some with me?” I told her I didn’t know. I was still trying to figure out who she was, if I was supposed to know who she was, if I had met her before, etc. “Today?” she asked. I suggested the following day. She sent a girl who lives in my neighborhood who I had talked to several times to come get me the next day, and we went to her house. She lives only a 2 minute walk from me, but it is drastically more rural. Her house was made of sticks and mud. Mine is made from cement blocks with a tin roof. Many of her family members didn’t speak much Portuguese. First we picked green beans, but not like American green beans. These are beans that come in the pod, but you have to take the beans out and cook them like dried beans. Then we picked pumpkin leaves. Then they pounded and crushed peanuts to make them look like flour. Then you just cook it all together, and you have this stuff to put over rice. I finally figured out that she was the sister of the head secretary at school. (Head secretary is a very prestigious position. You can get promoted from being a teacher to being the head secretary.)
I got a thermometer sent from home a few weeks ago: average temperatures out side are about 95-96 during the afternoon, and 80ish or even a little lower at night. Inside, it’s usually around 90-92 in the afternoon, and 85-87 at bed time, and maybe low eighties when I wake up. 95 outside can actually be pretty pleasant (or at least not unpleasant) in the shade, especially with even a small breeze. But 85 inside at night is surprisingly miserable to sleep in. When I wake up in the middle of the night, I’m often sweaty and gross. Therefore, I often opt to sleep on my porch, which isn’t nearly as soft, but overall much more pleasant.
It is malaria season here, because it is the rainy season. I can’t even count how many people I know who have gotten it already, but it doesn’t seem like too big of a deal to them. They just take the medicine, which is really cheap and easy to get, and get better.
My guard is one of those people who got malaria. Obviously I sent him home and told him he didn’t have to work. A few days later he came back, and offered to clean my house, as he occasionally does. I knew my floors were a bit dirty, so I did a quick sweep before he came in so he wouldn’t think I was gross. But he still swept out a too-big pile of dirt, scrubbed my floors, washed some rags and buckets, etc. So I decided to give him a peanut butter sandwich (peanut butter is kind of a big deal here). That night when he arrived for work, he gave me a broom and told me that his wife wanted to give it to me. I’m still not sure if it was a thank you for letting him rest at home/the peanut butter sandwich, or a hint that I should sweep more often. Based on the culture, and my preference, I’m going to assume it was a thank you present.
I really like the other teachers at the school. There are only one or two other female teachers who work in the morning with me, but they either don’t come to work very often, or avoid the teachers’ lounge. Anyway, a group of male teachers came up to me and asked me how to say a word in English, but I didn’t understand the work in Portuguese that they wanted to know. So they preceded to act it out: one teacher bent over and made a noise. Another teacher pointed to his butt and made a face and waved his hand in front of his nose. “Oh! To fart.” They asked me to write it for them, and conjugate it in the past tense. Then they preceded to perform some sort of skit about someone who smelled a fart and wanted to know “Who farted?” I was a little confused, but entertained. They were very entertained with themselves.
Anyone here over the age of 10 or so can bite the tops off of beer or soda bottles that are supposed to require a bottle opener. Anyone over the age of ten can also carry at least 10 gallons of water on their head.
Men here pee in public a lot. Take any place that a drunk American would consider peeing in at night, and a sober Mozambican man will pee there in the middle of the day, with anyone in sight. Snot rockets are also perfectly acceptable by any person in any outside location. Same goes for spitting, including (maybe even especially) during meals.
Our definition of good bread here is pretty much any bread that doesn’t have sand or rocks in it. Bread can still be termed decent if it has only a little bit of sand.
The Portuguese word for chalk is giz. This has led to some very mature jokes among us volunteer about having giz on our pants, etc. Whats that white stuff all over you? Hey, looks like you had a good class, you have giz all over your pants!
I have been asked if I’m afraid of rain, thunder, lightening, heavy rain, the dark, going to the bathroom alone at night, soccer balls, bugs, lizards, butterflies, really heavy rain motorcycles, and many other things that I’m not afraid of. But whenever I tell people I’m afraid of rats, they look at me like I’m weird and they don’t understand why I would be scared of them.