My new home

It's been a crazy crazy week.  On Tuesday I swore in as an official Peace Corps volunteer at the American Ambassador to Mozambique's house.  Nice place... I ate a bunch of mini-quiches and samosas before they sent us to the PC office to get our bank cards.  After about an hour of intense bank-card-handing out (imagine 70 people in a place not much bigger than the average Motel 6 lobby) they loaded us up into chapas and sent us out into the world (or, to the ATMs).  

This was the first time they split us up into our new regions--South, Central and North (I'm South for those of you keeping score at home).  That's when it hit me:  I'm not going to see some of my friends again for a whole year.  Mozambique is a ridiculously big country, you guys.  Seriously, the maps we have in the states do not do a good job of portraying how large this country is.  Add to that difficulties traveling due to poor or absent infrastructure.  

We went out in Maputo for one final good-bye party.  In the morning they shipped us off to our supervisors conferences.  I spent 3 days in in isolation with my fellow Southlandia-folk at a hotel-compound (complete with razor wire-fence!) about 3km from the actual beach and about 3km from any other place that I might have found useful (like a barraca that sells bolachas, or instance).    The conference got me excited to head to site (mostly to get out of the compound!).

On Saturday morning I jumped into the back of a land-cruiser with my suitcase and some straw-mats and headed to my new home with my sitemate Kim and a priest named Arlindo.  

When we arrived in my new town (remember, Mboa-city) we stopped at the mission-school where my friend is working and ate a delicious lunch with many Padres and Irmaos and some seminary students.  After that Padre Arlindo dropped me at my new house.

Ok.  So...I'm in the Peace Corps.  In one of the poorest countries in the world.  I love my town, and my new dirty house.  Yes.  It's My dirty house now.  

I inherited this house from a previous volunteer who left early.  So, everything in here has been sitting untouched like a really depressing time capsule for over 4 months.

Imagine a cross between Joe's Apartment and what a hoarder house looks like after Matt's 1-800-gotjunk truck pulls away.  It's no problem.  I have plenty of time to clean.

First step, empty the dead cockroaches out of the pans.

  My house is awesome though, because it has electricity.  A fan. and one of those concrete clothes washing thingies (see it in the picture, there?  OMG, never would I have expected to say these words "I'm SOOO glad I have a concrete tub to scrub my clothes against")

Bleach ALLLLLL the surfaces!

That's a little bit better.  Good thing I'm not afraid of spiders.  Also, I removed a wasp nest from the ceiling here.

The bucket-bath area.  So, we only have salt water here, and I have to fetch it from the yard.  Salt water leaves AWFUL water deposits if you let the water sit for....4 months.

This kitten showed up when I was washing my dishes today.  I'm going to keep him.

But he's super super skinny and sickly.  I fed him and gave him water and cleaned him up.  But I'm not sure if he'll make it.