Crocodiles, Christmas and Culinary Independence

How is it that one day can change everything?  After a thoroughly depressing day yesterday, today was refreshing, inspiring and hopeful.  I took a tour of Mangunde, the aforementioned isolated catholic mission with nothing to offer but solitude and a broken internet where I'll be living and teaching for the next two years.  Mangunde is awesome!  There is a high school, an agrarian school, a vast garden/farm, domestic animals, including pigs and rabbits, an HIV/AIDS and health clinic, soccer fields, basketball and volleyball courts, a beautiful river, and a broad expanse of villages surrounding the complex.   I am actually really excited about the different possibilities there will be to work outside of the classroom, whether it would be a project with the health center, an environmental group, or any community outreach interaction with the many villages.

A few things to keep in mind from the tour:  the river has crocodiles, they eat many people every year, so be careful.  The biblical plague of bugs that attacked our house yesterday was today’s lunch for many Mangundians.  In fact, we swept up all of the bugs that were dead on the floor last night (presumably to throw them away, right?).  Well, the same bugs that were on the floor yesterday were drying in a tray on the veranda ready to be happily munched on by everyone today.  Ta nice.

I made my own lunch and, oh culinary independence, how sweet you are.  I’m salivating just writing about it, seriously.. omelet with onion, green pepper, garlic, tomato, seasoned pepper, cheese and piri piri all in a sandwich.  Pineapple for dessert.  Another highlight, during dinner tonight: I had the opportunity to introduce Gracinda to the concept of Santa Claus (I know right, who doesn’t know about Santa Claus).  I have to say, it was more difficult than I thought it would be.  Words I don’t know in Portuguese: reindeer, sleigh, pull, chimney, north pole, elves.  Because of this, Gracinda’s current understanding of Christmas in America is a little like this: A fat bearded man named Santa Claus lives in a house in the north with a lot little people who make presents.  On the night before Christmas he flies around in a car driven by gazelles.  He lands this craft on kids’ houses and enters the houses via what Gracinda understood to be some sort of heating duct and leaves presents under a tree…Let me just say, this was a far more difficult concept than I originally thought I was getting into.  Yes, the tree is inside.  No, you have to cut it down outside first and then bring it in.  There are lamps on the tree, but the fat bearded man doesn’t put the lamps on the tree, he puts some of the presents under the tree.  The rest of the presents he puts in a sock hanging above the indoor fire.  He then climbs the heating duct and rides away in his gazelle-driven car.  Apparently in Mozambique, they just get together with family and have a nice meal.