Daily Life
Many of our friends and family have asked about our daily life. We don’t have much a routine but I can tell you about what does happen in our life on a daily basis.
Water
Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, Novencio, the 17-year old son of Pastor Fernando promptly arrives at 6:00 AM to carry our water. We have four 20-liter containers to carry water. In their former life they held vegetable oil, but now are being used to transport water. He walks about 3 minutes to a mill where there is a faucet and stands in line with others waiting for water. He generally takes about an 1 hour and 20 minutes from the time he leaves our porch to return with the filled containers.
We use this water to bathe, wash clothes, cook and drink. For all we drink, we boil first and so are continually boiling and cooling water. We have a large basin the bath room from which we use to wash our hands, flush the toilet and bathe. We take bucket baths and now that the temperatures are cooling down (especially in the mornings and evenings), we often boil water first so that it isn’t as cold for our “showers”. I look forward to vacations where we can shower with running water!
Noemia also uses this water to wash our clothes. On Mondays she washes towels and sheets and Fridays our clothes. As mentioned in an earlier posting, she frequently does the washing with her 16 month son on her back.
Food
We go grocery shopping several times a week. There is a small outdoor market with numerous small shops about a kilometer from our house where we get most of our dried goods and non-perishables. Women sell bananas and other fruits (right now avocados, oranges and tangerines are in season) on the street all over so they are readily available. Our next door neighbor is a bakery where we buy fresh bread each morning for breakfast. We buy most of our vegetables at a larger market on the other side of town. Most weeks, Noemia and I venture out there at least once to find greens, tomatoes, potatoes, pumpkins and onions. We get dairy (yogurt, milk, margarine) from the South African grocery store in Chimoio as well as spices we can’t find in the market and jam.
The staple of most Mozambicans that we know is a corn flour mush with a consistency of playdough. It has numerous names—massa in Portuguese, tshima in the languages around Beira, sadza in the languages here in Gondola. It seems to be a common food across southern Africa and there is a version of it in the Extending the Table cookbook (p. 151). They also eat a lot of fish because of the proximity to the ocean. Here in Gondola most fish that is available is dried, though some fresh water fish is sold too. They eat a lot of beans—cook dried beans for 3 hours, add some garlic and tomatoes and serve with massa or rice. Vegetables are seasonal, though in our first five months here we’ve eaten quite a bit of leaf cabbage and manioc leaves. They make several different kinds of sauces with greens, peanuts, tomatoes and coconut or any mixture of them. Fruit is available year-round, though depending on the season. We have already experienced mango, pineapple, papaya, and leechia seasons.
Temperatures
It is now “autumn” though they don’t really have autumn and spring—just summer and winter. The air is cooler and fresher here in Gondola and the evenings are in the low 70’s. The sun is rising about 6:10 AM and setting around 5:45 PM. The rainy season is winding down. We expected the rainy season to be comparable to other rainy seasons we’ve heard about with daily hard rains. However, here the rainy season meant a hard rain for about a day once a week.
Women are beginning to wear numerous capulanas in the mornings—one as the skirt, one as a wrap and one as a head scarf. As the day progresses, they take off their wrap and put it as an additional skirt or use it as a head scarf. Most wear several capulanas at a time and this way have an immediate baby carrier, cloth to sit on the ground, or anything else they need it for. They all wear sandals. Men wear long pants, shorts, short sleeves, long sleeves, or any combination, depending on where they are going. For everyday, they wear sandals but for more important occasions—church, business meetings—they wear shoes. This isn’t the whole general public, but a description of the sector of society that we relate with the most here in Gondola.
Transportation
We walk everywhere we need to go in Gondola. Noemia tells me that people ask her why “those white people don’t have a car?” We like walking both for the exercise and how it affords us to be able to see people and what is going on. And honestly for all our activities here in Gondola, things are close enough that to have a car isn’t worth it. Sometimes a bicycle would be helpful but so far we don’t have one. To get to Chimoio or Beira we use a “chopa” – bus. The fare from Gondola to Chimoio is 15 meticais each way (25 meticais = $1); from Chimoio to Beira is 125 meticais. When we do need a car, we share it with Sara, another MCCer who lives in Chimoio and keeps a MCC car at her place. We used it a few weeks ago to take the Gondola Mennonite Church to a daughter church out in the bush.
Communication
The common language across all of Mozambique is Portuguese. So we concentrated our language study in Beira on Portuguese. Now that we are settled into Gondola we are beginning to learn Shetewe, the local language which is a conglomeration of other major languages in Mozambique.
We have a land line phone in our house which we use to access our (very slow) internet. We also both have cell phones. We have learned how to send text messages and frequently use text messages to communicate with other MCCers or to let the other one know when we will be home. We don’t have a contract with MCel, the Mozambican cell company, but buy credit on an as needed basis. It is sold in increments of 50 and 100 minutes at a time for 50 meticais for 50 minutes.
Written by Jenny
Many of our friends and family have asked about our daily life. We don’t have much a routine but I can tell you about what does happen in our life on a daily basis.
Water
Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, Novencio, the 17-year old son of Pastor Fernando promptly arrives at 6:00 AM to carry our water. We have four 20-liter containers to carry water. In their former life they held vegetable oil, but now are being used to transport water. He walks about 3 minutes to a mill where there is a faucet and stands in line with others waiting for water. He generally takes about an 1 hour and 20 minutes from the time he leaves our porch to return with the filled containers.
We use this water to bathe, wash clothes, cook and drink. For all we drink, we boil first and so are continually boiling and cooling water. We have a large basin the bath room from which we use to wash our hands, flush the toilet and bathe. We take bucket baths and now that the temperatures are cooling down (especially in the mornings and evenings), we often boil water first so that it isn’t as cold for our “showers”. I look forward to vacations where we can shower with running water!
Noemia also uses this water to wash our clothes. On Mondays she washes towels and sheets and Fridays our clothes. As mentioned in an earlier posting, she frequently does the washing with her 16 month son on her back.
Food
We go grocery shopping several times a week. There is a small outdoor market with numerous small shops about a kilometer from our house where we get most of our dried goods and non-perishables. Women sell bananas and other fruits (right now avocados, oranges and tangerines are in season) on the street all over so they are readily available. Our next door neighbor is a bakery where we buy fresh bread each morning for breakfast. We buy most of our vegetables at a larger market on the other side of town. Most weeks, Noemia and I venture out there at least once to find greens, tomatoes, potatoes, pumpkins and onions. We get dairy (yogurt, milk, margarine) from the South African grocery store in Chimoio as well as spices we can’t find in the market and jam.
The staple of most Mozambicans that we know is a corn flour mush with a consistency of playdough. It has numerous names—massa in Portuguese, tshima in the languages around Beira, sadza in the languages here in Gondola. It seems to be a common food across southern Africa and there is a version of it in the Extending the Table cookbook (p. 151). They also eat a lot of fish because of the proximity to the ocean. Here in Gondola most fish that is available is dried, though some fresh water fish is sold too. They eat a lot of beans—cook dried beans for 3 hours, add some garlic and tomatoes and serve with massa or rice. Vegetables are seasonal, though in our first five months here we’ve eaten quite a bit of leaf cabbage and manioc leaves. They make several different kinds of sauces with greens, peanuts, tomatoes and coconut or any mixture of them. Fruit is available year-round, though depending on the season. We have already experienced mango, pineapple, papaya, and leechia seasons.
Temperatures
It is now “autumn” though they don’t really have autumn and spring—just summer and winter. The air is cooler and fresher here in Gondola and the evenings are in the low 70’s. The sun is rising about 6:10 AM and setting around 5:45 PM. The rainy season is winding down. We expected the rainy season to be comparable to other rainy seasons we’ve heard about with daily hard rains. However, here the rainy season meant a hard rain for about a day once a week.
Women are beginning to wear numerous capulanas in the mornings—one as the skirt, one as a wrap and one as a head scarf. As the day progresses, they take off their wrap and put it as an additional skirt or use it as a head scarf. Most wear several capulanas at a time and this way have an immediate baby carrier, cloth to sit on the ground, or anything else they need it for. They all wear sandals. Men wear long pants, shorts, short sleeves, long sleeves, or any combination, depending on where they are going. For everyday, they wear sandals but for more important occasions—church, business meetings—they wear shoes. This isn’t the whole general public, but a description of the sector of society that we relate with the most here in Gondola.
Transportation
We walk everywhere we need to go in Gondola. Noemia tells me that people ask her why “those white people don’t have a car?” We like walking both for the exercise and how it affords us to be able to see people and what is going on. And honestly for all our activities here in Gondola, things are close enough that to have a car isn’t worth it. Sometimes a bicycle would be helpful but so far we don’t have one. To get to Chimoio or Beira we use a “chopa” – bus. The fare from Gondola to Chimoio is 15 meticais each way (25 meticais = $1); from Chimoio to Beira is 125 meticais. When we do need a car, we share it with Sara, another MCCer who lives in Chimoio and keeps a MCC car at her place. We used it a few weeks ago to take the Gondola Mennonite Church to a daughter church out in the bush.
Communication
The common language across all of Mozambique is Portuguese. So we concentrated our language study in Beira on Portuguese. Now that we are settled into Gondola we are beginning to learn Shetewe, the local language which is a conglomeration of other major languages in Mozambique.
We have a land line phone in our house which we use to access our (very slow) internet. We also both have cell phones. We have learned how to send text messages and frequently use text messages to communicate with other MCCers or to let the other one know when we will be home. We don’t have a contract with MCel, the Mozambican cell company, but buy credit on an as needed basis. It is sold in increments of 50 and 100 minutes at a time for 50 meticais for 50 minutes.
Written by Jenny
April 8, 2007
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