Turn up the Heat

Its starting to get hotter here….and lately all I’ve been doing was sitting and complaining about how hot it actually is! I’m grateful however for electricity to power the fans, and for ice cold bucket baths. Yesterday I took a bath and was feeling so nice, THEN after hmmm…..5 minutes, I felt sweaty and gross again! It only gets hotter as time goes on. I remember Dec – Mar last year were extremely hot…..but ya know, I’m getting used to it.

One thing I still am NOT used to however, are those big spiders that look like little aliens. They’re orange. They’re fast, and they’re BIG. I called the neighbor boy who lives next door to come over and kill one yesterday. He laughed and said, “Oh Nana, nao fica medo.” (Nana, don’t be scared). I told him to stop laughing and kill the thing before it crawled in my bed. So he very casually found the thing in the corner of my room, PICKED it up, threw it back on the floor and squashed it. GROSS. I would’ve preferred he take it outside then kill it bc now my floor has spider juice everywhere, but its fine. Thank God for lemon scented bleach.

What happens when someone “shats” on a Chapa…..I wish I was Making this up

There is nothing predictable here in Mozambique. Ya can’t just wake up every morning and say to yourself, “everything will go as I plan today, I just know it!” Umm….yea, no ya don’t. Let’s take the experience I had on a chapa THIS morning. I try to avoid chapas as much as possible, but its pretty much the only means of transportation. I needed to do some errands in the city today that were necessary, so I did a few things at site then headed to the chapa stop. Surprisingly the second I got there, not one, but TWO chapas were waiting there. I looked at both to see which one I wanted. I choose the one who had the less ppl in it. I hate standing in chapas. I sat in the last row windown seat – in my opinion the best seat in the house. Its relatively comfortable and you don’t have to move outta the way when someone behind you is getting off. Score. About five minutes into the ride, we picked up a woman carrying two babies – one across her arms, the other one walking. They sat in the row in front of me. Her children were super cute. I love kids, so most of them are super cute…..hmmm but then I noticed the little girl walking didn’t look too happy. She looked like she was mad at the world. “Its ok,” I thought to myself, “its tough being a kid.” I go back to starting out the window, headphones on, while making sure no creepy Mozambican guy starts chattin’ it up. Next thing I know I smell something FOUL. Like the type of smell that is damaging to your health. It wasn’t just a “normal” poop, it smelled like there was something else going in in there. Everybody in the chapa got rowdy, and started their “Eii…Ughh…Sheeeeiiii,” noises. The lil girl who didn’t look so happy apparently didn’t want anyone else this morning to be happy either – bc she decided to “number 2” ALL OVER the place. I felt bad for her, cuz ya know….she’s young, she probably couldn’t help it……but I was also worried about my lungs and what type of gastromic fumes were entering my body. Her mom started yelling at her, “What is wrong with you, eh!?” The girl started crying. (Awww poor baby.) It didn’t end there.
A couple of ppl were yelling at the mom and asked her why she let her baby do that. Yikes, well I don’t think she asked her daughter,”pls go poopy on the chapa” this morning. The poor mom was doing everything she could to clean up the girl, but it literally covered half the third row. Her mom picked her up, and that’s when the fumes hit us HARD. I almost gagged, and at the same time I felt so bad for this lil girl though. I did, however, wanted to get outta this chapa asap, but we were only halfway there…..and I didn’t wanna pay again, so I breathed in and out of the window, making sure the breeze from the ride hit my face. When my stop came up, I literally ran out of the chapa……ANYTHING is possible in Mozambique.