Random thoughts/observations

-Nutrition for pregnant women is part of the 5^th grade curriculum.

-One day I was going with a friend to make a cake at another location. She came to my house so we could go together. I was bringing some supplies, which I had already put in a pot and wrapped with an African cloth, to be socially acceptable, of course. When my friend got here, I grabbed the supplies to leave. She took one look at me carrying the bundle in my hands, and was like, “Are you just going to carry it like that??? Here, give it to me to put on my head.”

-For the first time since I’ve been here, I finally, in February 2011, saw something fall off of someone’s head. It was a man going to sell some biscuits in the market. In a large plastic basin he had put the biscuits, and on top of the biscuits he had a small dish with sauce for them. Apparently the biscuits shifted, causing the sauce to spill, which broke the equilibrium. He managed to catch the basin before it fell to the ground, but exactly 13 biscuits spilled to the sandy dirt. He dusted them off, put them back in the basin, and went on his way.

-If you give a kid half of a cracker they will think you are the most amazing person in the world.

-No one believes me when I say I don’t have a fridge or TV in my house here.

-According to common knowledge: cucumbers cause fevers in kids, when a woman has her period it’s impossible for her to make a good cake,

-Reasons someone might come to my house that would never happen in the US: to get their chicken that got into my yard, to ask for some lit coals, to ask for a cracker, to ask to charge their cell phone, to ask me to fix their cell (obviously I can do that, I’m white),

Items that every Mozambican household has, or has arrangements with neighbors to use:

-Pilao: A giant mortar and pestle used to make flour from corn or peanuts, made of wood.

-Pilaozinho: A small mortar and pestle used to crush garlic, rock salt, or other small things.

-Panera: A shallow woven reed bowl about the size of a manhole cover used to sort rice, peanuts from shells, and other things

-Relador: A wooden thing resembling a footstool, but with a serrated metal rod/disk on one side. You sit on the footstool and pass coconut over the serrated part to grate it.

-Cuador: A wooden frame with fine, wire mesh. Used after the coconut it grated to squeeze the oils/liquids out of the gratings without the gratings falling in the food.

-Culher de pau: A long-handled wooden spoon, usually with a really small, shallow spoon part.