The sun usually rises on Chitengo at about 5:00 or 5:30 AM, although the birds herald the sun's arrival earlier than that most days. This morning Rich and our friend Carlos (who knows more of Mozambique's birds than nearly anyone else) spent the early hours listing to the birds and chronicling the order of the morning's songs. Another sure sound of morning is the sound of the guys arriving with the wheelbarrow behind our house to stock our hot water tank with coal to heat the water. (We get hot water twice a day - if all things are going as planned: once first thing in the morning and once about 12 hours later. ) The camp is up and moving before 7:00 AM. The
typical workday here is 7:00 AM until 3:30 PM. Not being much of a morning person, I am trying to adapt to this schedule! We usually eat breakfast in our house (cereal or, if we're lucky, granola, or sometimes eggs--no toast as bread is tough to come by here--and tea (Milo for Ian - sort of like Ovaltine). We can also be found at the restaurant for a buffet breakfast of scrambled eggs and biscuits on days when we're feeling social. We are one of only two houses to have kitchen facilities, and those without must eat all their meals in the restaurant at the moment. Our house is right in the middle of Chitengo, so our commute consists of walking 50
meters across the camp. Rich typically heads into meetings or to the computer lab/reception building (the only place with reliable electricity at the moment), and I head with Ian to our incipient gift shop. Ian spends his morning in "school" with his babysitter Natasha (22-year old Portuguese woman, daughter of my colleague Sophia) and several of the local kids (see another post for more about our school). I am currently working with Sophia
readying costumes for our group of women and kids who will perform songs and dances for tourists, starting with the President of Mozambique next Tuesday!!My summers in sewing class when I was a young teen are paying off now as I fashion shorts, tank tops, and skirts for our young performers on a little sewing machine Sophia found in Beira. The sewing isn't top quality, but it is sufficient for our purposes! And the outfits -- and the kids -- are very cute. (Hopefully this afternoon the kids and women will show up for rehearsal, and we'll get to see the costumes on! I will post photos here for you to see.)We usually eat lunch at the restaurant to save the time of cooking and cleaning up in the middle of the day. Food at the restaurant is usually buffet-style with vegetables, salads of various kinds, rice or noodles, and some sort of meat or chicken in a sauce. Our cook is great -- he always prepares a variety of salads so we have plenty of vegetables -- green beans, cabbage, carrots, cucumbers, lettuce, green peppers, tomatoes, various bean salads, egg salad, etc. Alas for my waistline he also regularly makes dessert at lunchtime: chocolate mouse, fruit cocktail, flan, passion fruit pudding, or fresh fruit... yummy!
After lunch, Ian takes a nap while I either work or catch up on emails (and hopefully this blog). For the first week or more since we arrived, he needed me to stay in the house during his nap, but now so long as he knows where he can find me when he wakes up, he is comfortable with my leaving the house, which give me some much-needed freedom! When he wakes in the late afternoon, we usually have a swim in the small pool, and are often the only people there! The trees cast a beautiful deep shade over the pool during the late afternoon.
The sun sets around 5:00, and all is dark by 5:30. The generator that provides our power (we aren't yet serviced by electrical lines, but hope to be by September) comes on at about 5:15 PM, first time with electricity since lunchtime. We all don long sleeves and pants and spray exposed parts to prevent mosquito bites - we do live in a malaria zone, after all! Evening is a good time for socializing with a beer or G&T at the restaurant. We make dinner at home, in large part because dinner at the restaurant is served at 7:30 or 8:00 PM - quite late for a small boy. Noodles or rice with sauce, carrot salad or cucumber-tomato salad, or various other vegetables usually comprise our dinner. While we can access fresh vegetables, we also use a lot of canned food. Ian's favorite is creamed corn - anything with sugar. Milk here doesn't require refrigeration so long as the packages remain sealed, so we can buy milk by the case and keep it in the cupboard, opening them and storing them in the refrigerator as we need them. Same for juice.
Ian heads to bed at about 8:00, but rarely is asleep before 9PM. We all sleep under mosquito nets by night, and Ian is so accustomed to it by now that he wants to sleep under it during his nap as well, even though malaria mosquitoes don't pose a risk during this time. Rich and I read or work before bed, and tuck in when the power goes out at 10:00 PM. We light a candle inside a hurricane lamp that burns all night long as a nightlight for Ian, as the darkness of Africa without any lights whatsoever is truly dark!
