Ok, so I don’t feel like I’ve been doing that great of a job really talking about what life is like here. To improve on this, I think I’m going to start with a few topics that have been very important in my life lately: Food and Chapas.

FOOD:
So much better since leaving our host families! Becky and I do most of our shopping in our local market, where there are a bunch of stands where people are selling what they grow in their machambas. Most people here have a field where they grow a few things. At the market, you have your basics- there’s always tomatoes, onions, rice, cassava leaves, beans, oil and bread. Depending on what’s in season, there’s also fruit. Mango season is on its way out (SO SAD), but there have been more pineapples lately, and I’m told nectarines are coming. And there’s always bananas. So good. So if we want any variety of vegetables or spices or anything, we go to Maxixe, which is about a 10 minute chapa ride away. They have a huge outdoor market where you can buy pepper, cucumber, sometimes lettuce, cabbage, oranges, papaya, and lots of other stuff. We also planted a little machamba in our yard. The cucumber, zucchini, green beans, and cantaloupe have all sprouted. If my zucchini grows, I am going to buy an oven purely for the purpose of baking chocolate zucchini bread!

Becky and I have been having so much fun cooking. We were given this great cookbook entitled ‘You Can Make It in Mozambique!’ We made a lot of really good stuff lately. Highlights include: spicy curry cabbage over rice, homemade tortillas with spicy beans and rice, and split pea veggie mush with cous cous (a rare find in the South African store!) Everything is spicy, because they have this amazing piri-piri pepper that we use in all of our cooking. Can be dangerously spicy, you have to be careful how much you add.

We went to go visit friends in Inhassoro last weekend, and it was the best food weekend ever. Sara had found dried seaweed, so we made sushi (which inspired me to buy some seaweed, which cost the equivalent of what I’m supposed to spend on food for 4 days). We also made fruit crepes, quesadillas (cheese is so hard to come by here!), and sweet potato gnoki with tomato mango sauce. Ha, oh yeah, and one night when we went to the beach for dinner, I had my first seafood with the head on where I wasn’t grossed out at all! It was a huge ‘pedro’ fish and some fried squid that was really good! I think that’s about it on food. Really good and we have too much time on our hands to cook since school hasn’t started yet. I’m sure it’ll be rice and beans every night when things pick up!

CHAPAS:

Oooooh, public transportation in Mozambique. Always an experience. So I am just going to describe yesterdays chapa adventure coming back from Inhasorro. Just for reference, the trip there took 6 hours, and was relatively uneventful. We are at the chapa stop at 8 am, ready to leave. Chapas are the main form of public transportation here; they look like really large vans. There are 4 rows of ‘seats’ plus the front. They fit 4 people in each row where 3 would comfortably fit. The whole chapa could comfortably fit 18 people, but chapa drivers don’t like to leave unless there’s at least like 23 people shoved in there. So we’re at the chapa stop. And there’s maybe 10 people waiting around, so it’s obvious we’re not leaving for a while until more people show up. About an hour later, there are about 18 people, so we start to load up in the first chapa. I manage to get one of the prized front row seats, where your knees are not like squished up against your chest, so I’m feeling pretty good about this chapa ride. Then we all wait in the chapa for another 30 mins, while they try to cram more people in. And it’s like 100 degrees out. After the seats are filled, then people start standing, hunched over, wherever there’s a little space. So then the driver starts the chapa, and it won’t start. There’s a lot of smoke and it sounds like the engine might start, but not quite. No one seems concerned. The driver yells for some guys to help push. So 3 guys are pushing, we get out on the road, and then it starts (woo!). We’re putting along for a couple hundred feet, and it dies again. At this point, I’m like this chapa is not going to make it to our transfer spot. So Becky and I get off, despite the motorist insisting that nothing is wrong. We go back to the stop, get in another chapa, with a more unfortunate seat, and an hour later, we are on the road again! About 30 mins into the trip, we pass our first chapa, which is still on the side of the road, and most of the passengers on that chapa pile into this one. I’m sitting next to a guy who’s wearing a trucker hat that says “Sex is a misdemeanor. Da more I miss, de meaner I get.” He was a really nice guy! So this chapa was functioning a lot better, but stopped like every 5 mins to let people off, or pick more people up, or sometimes the driver just wanted to talk to some friends along the side of the road. We made it to our transfer, waited for a new chapa to take us home for another 2 hours, and then were on the road again. We made so many unnecessary stops! Any time anyone needs to pee, they make the announcement, and we have to pull over, while they go in the bush. I am terrified of the moment I have to ‘fazer xi-xi’ while on a chapa. It’s way easier for guys to do that, plus if the white girl needed to go pee, I’m sure everyone would be watching and talking about it. I’m sure in 2 years, it’ll happen. On the second leg of the trip, I was seated next to a couple chickens and like 3 babies that kept getting passed around, depending where there was a tiny bit of space. We got home finally at 7 pm, almost 11 hours later. So that’s that chapa trip. Every time, different adventure. I have a friend who swears she was bitten on her heal by a goat that was shoved under a seat.