15.03.2006

The second week here, should start to really be here

I have been here in Africa now more than a week. Still, I feel like not fully living here
yet, I feel like visitor rather than an inhabitant. Well, its actually true, but you know
how it is with the volunteer dreams like being part of the community and blah blah.
Actually, I think, It'll come. Right now, it feels really like being a celebrity. We get
different treatment and attention everywhere and anywhere we go. On our way here, for
example, when we were having a ride on that chicken bus, I went to a toilet in gas station
and there was a line. Women in front of me insisted on letting me use the toilet first.
Yesterday we visited local hospital and there were lines of sick people behind every door.
However, we were introduced to doctors and they spent minutes on formalities with us. Last
night there was an assembley of students and we were welcomed like movie stars or something
like that. It was really amazing and a little bit scary. The first question we received from
the crowd of about 100 people was if senhorita Kristiina is married or not. Funny, huh..
After ten months mastering in cleaning, cooking, dishwashing and building in CICD life here
feels like in a care-home. The school has employed senhora Amelia, who's cleaning the
volunteer house every day, she also cooks a dinner for us during the working days.
Actually we could eat all our lunches and dinners during the whole week in school cafeteria,
but beans with something (usually massa, cornmeal stuff or sometimes rice) can get a little
bit boring for spoilt people like us. So we only eat lunch there. The only cooking we have
to do is prepare a sandwich or peel a banana in the morning and organize something in the
weekends. Amelia does also all the dishwasing. She gets paid 1 million medicais per month
(about 25 GBP) which is twice as much as she'd get anywhere else. The water for washing,
drinking and cooking is brought from a pump nearby by two women and they get half a million
together in one month... They carry big canisters of water on their heads, both carring a
baby on the back and little one by the hand. Another woman washes all our clothes twice a
week in a river (basically just beating the hell out of the clothes against rocks, I haven't
seen it yet though) and irons them all afterwards (to kill the bacteria and stuff). I
haven't wore ironed clothes for ages! :)
So, you can imagine our lives here. Don't forget to turn on the fan (I've got a cold because
of it, it really sucks to be sick here in so beginning because of my own stupidness...)
and stuck the mosquito net behind the mattress and wooden bed. I'm dressed so fully in the
evenings, using at least two repellants etc but the damn mosquitos still find me and bite
the hell out of me...
Anytime the students need to wait for something in a meeting or something, they all start to
sing together. And the way they sing, is just amazing. Without anyone conducting them, they
start different voices and tunes and sound without any practice better than world famous
gospel choirs. Yesterday another volunteer from US was doing an English club and they were
singing Amazing Grage and No woman, no cry. You can just imagine how it sounded like...
I have a little cold right now, and some rash on my hands, but otherwise am quite healthy,
hopefully. The weather has been really hot, only two days ago it was a big thunderstorm
near by (it was BEAUTIFUL, I've never seen so many lightnings) and after that it's been
rather cold (about 20 C) and rainy. We visited Beira (the second biggest city in Mozambique,
about 1,5 hours away from here) and went to the beach as well. It was so nice and hot and I
burned my back, of course. Indian ocean was brownish and had rather big waves. And the local
white people were having nice cold beers in a restaurant wearing nothing but bikini as
local black girls swam in their full clothes and local black guys were doing athletics on
the sand (rather impressive). There are quite many muslims in Beira and there are even more
when you go further North. In rural areas people are rather Christian. In Lamego, where we
live there are about 50 churches from different beliefs. We went into one rather big one
which looked like an animal stable from outside.. it was crazy, it had just some benches
made out of soil and a wooden cross... I'd love to go for a communial there one day..