(Written Oct 05, 2013)
So I have been in Namaacha for one week. I can’t believe that is all the time I have
been here, it definitely feels like longer because so many things have happened
and changed in my life in the last week/week and a half since getting to
Mozambique.
First of all, my name has changed since being in
Namaacha. Something in the middle of my
name is very hard for Mozambicans to say and I was warned of this by one of our
Medical Guys at the hotel during our health interviews. He said most volunteers here named Caitlin
end up being Catya. So when I got to my
host family and introduced myself as Caitlin and no one could say it, I said
that they could call me that. So to my
family and many other Mozambicans I have met, I am now Catya.
I also have a whole new family I'm living with. I have Minha Mia (my mom…
in Portuguese), her name is Ecinet, two host sisters, one host brother and two
nieces. Because of communication
barriers, I don’t know a whole lot about all of them yet, but I am slowly
learning. The oldest sister, is a
professor of crianças (of
little kids) and is only at our house on the weekends. She has two girls, Matild, 10 years old, and
Kelly, 6 months old. My other sister is
17 and her name is Suzette, I feel like she is my babysitter. She also does basically all the cooking and
cleaning and will never let me help her.
My brother’s name is Jose, he is 16 and loves to hang out and play with
Matild when she is here.
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| My yard |
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| The front of my house |
It is very strange living with them because of
how limited my Portuguese is and they only know a few words in English. It has been a challenge, but I still love it
here. They are super nice and help me do basically everything even though most if it I could probably do on my own. I always ask and try to help
make my food and wash dishes but they refuse to let me. I was able to wash my own clothes on Friday
but Suzette was instructing me the whole time and basically trying to do it for
me.
The house is pretty small but has a pretty big
yard to hang out in.
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| My bathroom |
I was also digging the bucket baths (in the
same room as the latrine in basically a little out house in my yard) until last
night. Basically I heat up some water,
dump it in my shower bucket, put the perfect amount of room temperature water
in it so I can stand dumping in on my skin, take it outside to the latrine and
start showering. It took a little practice
to be able to wash my hair because it’s hard to get my hair wet, and get all
the soap out. I don’t wash my hair
everyday (more like every other/every few days) and I have only conditioned my
hair once, because that was WAY too much work!
I’m pretty sure I still have a few layers of soap on my skin but I
really feel very clean after each bath, plus I have to bathe twice a day, once
before breakfast and once at night before dinner. I have already tried to get out of bathing at night some days, because I just don't feel like I need to, but Minha Mia will not let that fly.
Ok now for the reason I am now uneasy about my latrine/bucket
baths at night. Up until last night I
had only seen a few cockroaches and some lizards, and I can deal with
those. But last night when I went in to
take my bath, I turned on the light and there sat a HUGE mouse! It was more the size of a rat but looked like
a mouse! Surprisingly it was kinda cute,
but I DID NOT want to be in a small contained room with it! So I panicked ran out of the room, composed
myself went back in and it was hiding behind a water bucket. So I made a bunch of noise, and in ran all
the way along the wall to another bucket of water. This is when I moved into the room, away from
the door, so I wasn’t blocking its exit and kicked the bucket it was
behind. Mister Mouse tried to jump and
climb the wall right there and then ran out of the room climbed up the wall and
was gone. Needless to say I took a very
quick and bad bath and am now a little scared to go back to the latrine in the
dark. YIKES! I guess welcome to Africa!
(10/6/2013 Small update.) So after seeing a giant rat/mouse thing (not
sure which one it was, looked more like a mouse, for those of you who knew
about Millie, the dwarf hamster I had in college with my roommates, it kind of
looked like that, but giant and had a big gross tail) I’ve been kind of scared
of going into my latrine, especially in the dark/at night. So of course today (the day after the
sighting) the power is out for the evening. Now I usually take my night bucket bath
around 7ish, so I was hoping tonight that they wouldn’t make me take one since
it was dark. Well I must have forgotten
I was in Mozambique and this happens all the time, so life goes on as normal…
because sure enough 7 o’clock roles around and I’m instructed to go take my
bath and that my sister had heated up my water for me. I cautiously went into the bathroom with my
head lamp, shined the light all around by the door then where I could see from
the door and finally all over. No mouse
and only saw one cockroach. So I quickly
bathed, while continuously shining my head lamp all over the place in case I
had missed something the first time.
Needless to say, I did not take a very good bath again tonight… good
thing I’ll be taking another one tomorrow morning!
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| Jose and Matild having a water fight while doing laundry |
Ahhh MOUSE!!
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