Welcome Home!

Well, after a little over a week of waiting – we finally moved into our new house!!! With the help (ie truck) of Padre Pedro, we loaded up our boxes and bags our groceries and fans and headed to the house in Moatize.  As soon as we pulled through the gate (yes, there’s a gate) our neighbors who share the property were all up in our business. They unloaded the truck and helped us bring our bags in and then – shock – were aghast at the filth that was the inside of the big yellow house.  Before Helen or I could stop him, Antonio (the patriarch of the neighbor-house) had dumped buckets of soapy water onto the floor. Is this the most effective way to clean here I thought? Absolutely not. Am I in a position to stop or correct this middle aged man who wants to help us with this pigsty? Antonio also quickly informed us that right now, there is no electricity in Moatize. And when there’s, no electricity, there is not water.  Fabulous.

So while Antonio worked away at the floor, AntoniA (his daughter, are you surprised?) whisked us off to the market that is just beyond our gate. To buy bottled water, of course. Along with a mop, rags, and dishwashing soap (which we have since used to clean everything from dishes to floors/walls and cabinets and an oven)…Only late last night did we realize that we were still lacking toilet paper and food. BUT we were on a cleaning mission. No time for that.

Naturally we would be setting out on this cleaning binge at 2 pm…the hottest time of the day.  We scrubbed and sweated and scrubbed our kitchen. Which of course made me think of the time my mom helped move me back down to my house in college the summer before my senior year and how appalled she was at the state of the house. Our house, like any good college house, was named the DollHouse. Why? Because it was hideous on the outside and it needed a girly name since 5 girls would live there. Plus, when you have a party – it needs a location better than “Audrey, Lyndsay, Jessica, Koko and Katherine’s House”….Enter “There’s a party at the dollhouse tonight.” I digress. Anyways, she was shocked at the beer stuck to the baseboards of the walls (that had probably gone unnoticed for 9 months)…and so we cleaned and scrubbed and washed that house until it shined. “You will like cooking in this kitchen so much better now that its good and clean.” I’m pretty sure I’ve heard my grandma say that too. So as Helen and I broke a serious sweat scrapping god-knows-what off the inside of our “new” stove, I told her- “ Helen we’ll like cooking so much better now that this is clean.”  It’s more convincing when Char says it….

So when we finally reached a good stopping point and had rigged up our mosquito nets (I really love my mosquito net) – we took a break and wondered around our ground. At our house, we have about 4 or 5 dogs. One of whom recently had puppies – so we also have 5 precious less-than-2-month old puppies too! Why stop the fun with just dogs? We also have ohhh probably 30 or 40 goats. A load of chickens (standard, chickens are everywhere). And…this is the kicker…. About 50 pheasants. Now, galihnas do mato (or “chickens of the bush” as that translates) are goffy looking spotty birds with tiny heads, which makes me think they’re really stupid. I assumed these strange overgrown looking chickens could not fly, but oh I was wrong. They struggle/fly into a mango tree outside our backdoor at night.  All of them. Giant birds in a mango tree making a hideous squawking noise.  And they sleep there.  So when I am feeling creative with all of my free time and missing Christmas, I’m going to make myself a Twelve Days of Christmas: Moz Edition. And the number one thing will be “Pheasant in a Mango Tree”