Noise

Mozambique is the loudest place I have ever lived. I’ve lived quite a few places in the States and three countries overseas—Russia, Mozambique and South Africa; Moz is the loudest. I find it ironic that in the description of Mozambique on job descriptions for MCC, someone described Mozambicans as talking softly. Perhaps in front of authority figures, but in normal life, it's not unusual for conversations to happen across distances with shouting.

It’s not unusual to hear music from our neighbors. We’ve grown accustomed to people’s ways of sharing their music since our days in Gondola. There are times I have prayed in the heat of the summer with the fan blowing on us for the electricity to go out just so we could have quiet to sleep. There are only so many doors and windows we can shut so that the music is shut out, but it’s still there, often feeling the beat through the floor as late as 4 AM.

Sometimes I stop and count how many noises I hear. Friday was a particularly loud day. We live on the fourth floor by American counting, third by the rest of the world. When I counted, this is what I heard: Nadia talking to herself in her crib before falling asleep for her nap, the radio playing some sort of Mozambican hip-hop (our maid’s choice of music), neighbors playing their music, people talking on the street below us, workers renovating the stores in our building on street level with power tools, and traffic. I long for quiet.

Exercises
Nadia puts me to shame. Look at this. She decided to stretch with me this morning and she can lay flat on the floor with her feet straight out to the sides. Amazing. The other day she decided to help me with my pushups by getting on my back.

Sites Out Our Window


Honestly, I think we have lived in some of the most interesting places here in Mozambique. What we see outside of our windows gives us quite a bit of entertainment. In Gondola we would see people fly by on their bicycles with their wife on the back, two children on the bars in front of their dad and one on the mothers back. We would witness houses burning in the distance, miles away, probably the result of some child who did not intend to be an arson. We would look out our window and see men passing by our window with goats and chickens, all on top of heavily loaded semi-trucks. We would see numerous street fights including a woman who must have been on drugs, because it took 5 people to drag her away from a fight with a random woman on the street with whom she thought had stolen her husband.

Maputo has been even crazier. I have already mentioned the things we see from our window in earlier blog posts. But occasionally we hear a crash or other weird sounds and run to the window to see what has happened. Tonight we were watching a movie and we hear a big crash that sounded like a horrible accident. We rushed to the window to see the action. No accident, but right below our apartment was a small building with a roof on its side. Apparently it fell of the back of the pickup which was carrying it. The roof was all banged up but the rest seemed undamaged.



I do not know what is more bizarre, the fact that they were carrying it on a pickup truck, the fact that it was not tied down or that a dozen or so drunk men were shouting orders at each other tying to lift the small shed up and move it off the road. I wonder if drunk driving was again the cause.