Weekend Update - Mountain edition

Friday:

Hmm let me think…On Friday our professor let us out of language a few minutes early.  Some of the PC kids met up at Casa dos Dois for a cerveja…. Mozambique actually has some pretty decent beer! My fave is a dark beer, Launtina Preta. The weather was awesome, so we posted up at the plastic tables outside.  Now, when it gets dark here, you’re pretty much S.O.L. if you’re trying to walk home one the rocky paths. Plus, I needed dinner and don’t know enough Portuguese to explain to Mama Joana why I was out past 8 pm. So I called it a night pretty early.

Saturday:

There is a huge market at the end of town on Saturdays and Wednesdays – which is where Mama Joana works.  It’s pretty much just wood tents with thatched roofs, one after the other.  There are huge sections of fresh produce, which would be awesome if I was cooking for myself (but …. I’m not). They sell all of this crazy clothes/shoes too. It’s all consignment stuff. So there are all of these old t-shirts and used soccer cleats etc.  Half of the time, the T-shirts are from colleges or sports teams in America…..so people don’t really know what they’re wearing since most of them can’t read English. This explains why you see grown men wearing shirts that say things like “Greek goddess.” And they are totally fine with it!  I bought myself two new capulanas… one of which I’m taking to a seamstress this week to have a dress made. It’s green. (shocked? Ha!)

That afternoon we (me and 5 friends) perfected “passear-ing.”  What is passear-ing you ask…well. Passear-ing is a big social thing here. It basically means you are walking with no destination. Just wandering. Stopping. Talking to people on the road. We walked wayyyy down into Bairro B, the neighborhood next to mine.  There, we picked up some kids. They pretty much just followed us to see what we were up to.  Found an entire heard of under-3 year old boys who were mesmerized by a ukulele one of my friends was carrying.  So we had a little impromptu  jam session with toddlers playing air guitars.  SO CUTE!

Sunday:

I was up at 6 am on the dot.  Mama Joana told me that I needed to wash my clothes and sheets AND sweep and scrub my floor before I left for our mountain trek.  So by 6:15 I was on our porch scrubbing my knuckles raw in soapy buckets of water.  At 9:30 I met a group of other volunteers (close to 30 of us total) for a hike. Not just any hike. A hike up a mountain. And not just any mountain.  A mountain where the borders of Mozambique, South Africa, and Swaziland meet.  So after a solid few hours hiking – part of which was super steep – we finally made it to the top.  We brown-bagged lunch, took lots of pictures, and enjoyed the view of all 3 countries. Ps- standing in three countries at once totally beats the Four Corners in the States.  Just saying….. On the way back, we stopped in this incredible grove of trees for a shade break.  I have no idea what kind of trees these were, but the were huge and wind-y and PERFECT for climbing.  By the time I made it home around 3pm that afternoon – I was in dire need of a cold bath.  Mostly because (even though I had pants on) I had dirt caked to my skin. Oh and it was freaking HOT. Like, crazy hot.  So post-cold bath,  I napped on the floor of my room because I have a tile floor…..and I now understand why our dog used to like to lay on the time floor in the basement during the summer !  ha!