The Journey Home

The road to Nauela is not a long one (cue that song from The Russians Are Coming “it’s a long road to…” when they’ve just gotten off the submarine and are walking along the beach) by Mozambican standards, but when it poured the night before and left mud pits, and a particularly pointy piece of charcoal from the sack you’re sitting on is digging into your right buttcheek, and that sack of flour that appears to have a hole in it is starting to slide on top of your foot, you feel every bump in the dirt road. And just when you thought they couldn’t possibly fit another person, here they are slowing down so someone else can squeeze in among the tangle of limbs and babies and chattering and chickens.

I don’t mind these cramped hour and forty minute rides (or much much longer, if you’re going any further. Be warned, there are no facilities on this vehicle). When I can stop paying attention to the corner of that wooden table - which is also hitching a ride, along with a stack of plastic chairs, buckets of various shapes and sizes, a broom and 2 pots (they’re with me) and 9 boxes of gin - to make sure it doesn’t gouge my eye out, there is a breathtaking (or maybe that was that last bump, which almost made you bite your tongue off) 294˚ view of mountains and valleys and mango trees.

I yell for the driver to let me off outside my house (door to door service – what more could I ask?); he doesn’t hear me because he’s in the part of the truck that is actually made for human beings, and I’m out in the wind in back, so someone reaches around and bangs on the side of his door. My neighbor calls my name and comes running, and takes my broom and pots for me as I try to get off the truck without landing on the ground in a horizontal position (usually by this time my feet and a good part of my legs are numb). I walk around to the back of my house to greet my family and receive comments about how dirty I am. I climb the stairs to my porch, wondering what someone dropped at some point to cause half of the second stair to be missing. The metal grate that serves as a screen door makes a familiar scraping sound as I pull it open. I kick aside the crunchy cockroach corpses that accumulated in my absence, and I’m home.

Animal poop

During training, we designed mini-lessons and presented them to each other for teaching practice. During one person’s lesson, a volunteer was teaching about the environment, and asked us to write on a small piece of paper examples of sources of contaminants of local water. So I wrote down “animal poop.” After the activity, I stuck the paper into my Portuguese-English dictionary, thinking (and I specifically remember thinking this), “Maybe I’ll look fondly back on this piece of paper in 40 years. Might as well save it.” Fast forward 3 months, one of my students stops by my house to return my Portuguese-English dictionary that I had lent to him, and he says inquisitively, “I found of piece of paper inside that said ‘animal poop.’ So I left it where it was.” I have no doubt that he looked up ‘poop’ in the dictionary, but I didn’t attempt to explain the story behind the 2x2” piece of paper, which is still in the dictionary and just as I am typing this I remembered that the dictionary is currently with my colleague who also teaches English. But this time when the dictionary is returned to me, I will be prepared to tell the story.

Please, sir, I want some more…water

A day in the life of my water bucket:

5:00am – wake up, stretch, dust off my…my lid (Jiminy Cricket)

5:02 – journey across the street to water pump, put in 20 liters of water (around 5:08, when the sun comes up, it’s too late. There’s suddenly a huge line at the pump)

5:14 – venture back across the street, balanced precariously on owner’s head. Slosh a little bit of water on her clothes just for fun.

5:17 – dump approximately 14 liters of water into the toilet to flush it. Think for a second about how if the toilet were a latrine, you would only need to carry half as much water. Then remember that latrines have cockroaches in them and walking outside in the dark in the rain to pee is not fun, and be thankful it’s an indoor toilet.

5:45 – bucket bath! With a little practice and the right pouring technique, you’ll almost feel like you’re standing under the Niagra setting in the shower. Not really.

6:04 – donate 3 liters to water filter for drinking water

6:47 – brush teeth

11:00 – boil some water to start cooking lunch (and dinner too, if you anticipate not feeling like lighting the charcoal 2 times in one day)

12:00 – get more water now if needed. Hardly anyone will be at the pump because it’s the hottest part of the day

5:55 – wash dishes before it gets dark

8:22 – if particularly dirty, another bucket bath. cold water, as usual (during training, my host family spoiled me by heating my water for me. None of that here! I always feel more alive, alert, awake and enthusiastic (thanks Mike) after a cold shower anyway). Get lots of rest for another busy day - if you're a water bucket, it's a rough life!