Notes on life

If you ever dye Easter eggs, use white ones. We used brown ones and the colors did not come out as brilliant.

It’s sugar cane season again. The ground is littered with chewed pieces and discarded skins from the cane.

The women at church let me cook with them today for Easter breakfast. Albeit, I did not cook much, just cut tomatoes and onions and stir them, but it is a start. They also let me eat with them after everyone else had eaten and only gave me a short chair next to the grass mat (instead of either eating with the men or on a normal chair far away from them) and a tin plate of my own (instead of nice glass one).

There have been a lot of funerals lately. Every day we see a truck go past with a coffin and people walking beside it. Our neighbor says that he used to go to two funerals in six months, but now goes to nine. He didn’t say why the increase.

The rainy season is coming to a close. I think there are two seasons here…dust and mud.

African bees sting and for two days the spot itches and swells.

African centipedes hurt worse than bees. Hurts for one hour. Even after taking Benedryl.

Gondola is digging trenches to put in a public water system. For 25 meticais ($1 USD), we registered our house to be hooked up. They estimate the cost will be 75 meticais a month when it comes, though they can not give a time frame for hook up.

We use our horn more here in a 50 km round trip to Chimoio than we did for a year in the States. People walk on the sides of the road without much thought to the traffic and do not get over when a car comes. Bicyclists, too, use the side of the road instead of the shoulder and sometimes we have to beep several times for them to get over. There does not seem to be much awareness of the power of a vehicle and how it can quickly have an accident.