Modern Conveniences

I’ve been in Maputo, the capital of Mozambique for about 2 months now. And in that time I have been blessed with the modern conveniences that most of us at home take for granted: water from a pipe and a freezer. The other 11 months I lived mostly in a rural area, Zobue, Mozambique, located on the border of Malawi. I’ve never lived in a purely rural area before. So it is fair to say that theoretically I knew what I was getting into but in practical terms I had not a bloody clue. The biggest hurdle for me to get over was not having indoor plumbing and electricity and thusno refrigeration.

My days in Zobue usually started around 5am. The chickens wake you. The dogs wake you. And at times the man next door fermenting traditional beer (chubuku) would wake the whole neighborhood.Evidently when you make home brew with 120% alcohol content you need two colossal sized speakers that blast the same song for a 20 hour period. Well, at least I thought most everyone got up at 5 am like me. Most women in my immediate vicinity got up about 2 am to place a tin cup, a coffee cup, anything basically, to identify their spot in the line to pump water from the nearer well at the school. But my day would start at 5am with me lugging three20 liter containers to the farther placed well, at the church , a five minute walk with an empty container and then a ten minute walk when lugging them, one by one, perched on my shoulder (alternately), back home. The process took about a hour each day. I was usually stared at---uzungos (white people/foreigners) are deemed not able bodied enough to fetch our own water, that must be the reason why we pay Africans to fetch it for us. Ummm. No, we just have more money and we are lazy. I was not so great at first learning how to use just 60 liters of water to meet all my personal and household needs: bathing, cleaning the house, washing laundry, cleaning dishes, watering our vegetable garden, cooking, and of course, drinking it. But I learned. I also learned to buy food every single day and cook just enough for that day. And I learned to not use electricity to cook—as there were so many blackouts that it was a necessity to use a one pot charcoal fogao (stove). At first it would take me 30-60 minutes to light it. I ended up losing weight because I just couldn’t bear the thought of lighting that thing more than once a day to cook so I ended up eating a lot of bananas and mangoes from my tree out back, especially when my boyfriend was off doing his work in another site.

So I repeat, we didn’t have refrigeration. But you know who else didn’t have it? Meat vendors.I oncebought day old meat in Zobue. Day old meat in Africa.In the hottest and dustiest region of Mozmbique.ReallyAishia? But we hadn’t eaten meat in a long time and I really wanted it.Our primary choices were pork or goat meat and occasionally beef but you had to run like Carl Lewis to get that as it only happened about once a month, and if you didn’t’ sprint and form the line by 6:30am—all the meat was gone by 7am—or you could fight the strays for the entrails Yum. So, they slaughter the pig or goat and then put chunks of it on a bamboo like table and swat the flies away with either a stick with strips of cloth, or plastic strips from old rice sacks or just a rag. I don’t know where that rag has been but it’s always dirty looking. So on the day I’m buying this meat, I look at it and I see the flies and the slightly crusty, congealed blood. Me: “That’s old meat” Bored looking vendor: “Nao, senhora, we killed it today.” I look at him, and then I look at the meat. He looks at me, swatting, swatting away, and then looks at the meat. Me: “Ok, 1kilo.” Yeah, it was old…. and my boyfriend sure took to it—I ended up giving him my portion as I could taste the rottenness of it. Evidently it is some kind of delicacy here to chow on rotten meat. Another lesson learned: Flies, congealed crustiness = no buy. So with that said life is easier with better access to electricity---in that we now buy meat in bulk and store it in our freezer. But I have to say we are still living the same way in that I cook one big meal a day and for the most part I will go to market to get my veggies on a daily basis—the energy still cuts off and so I’m stuck with my fogao (we source the energy to other countries in the region, but we the actual residents don’t get good service. I will never get it—no matter how many times an economist explains it to me.). As for water in Maputo, amazingly enough, there are still many households in this big city that don’t have indoor plumbing, or if they do, the infrastructure was so neglected during two wars (one for independence and another 30 year civil war) that it really doesn’t function all that well. So we finally dug our own ditch and placed the pipe for water—and we have fresh water anytime we want—except when the government shuts it off between 5-8pm, usually 3-4 times a week.

But not having indoor plumbing is not the most horrible thing in the world, terribly inconvenient and frustrating at times, yes, but not horrible. I got caught once in a downpour on the way back from the market one day in Zobue. And as I was crossing the Catholic churchyard to the road to my house, I saw a group of children laughing, jumping and just having all around kid fun in the rain. But when I looked closer through the giant raindrops, I realized that they were having fun but at the same time they were completely naked because they were bathing themselves from the runoff of the church roof—like their own personal shower. They froze and stared at me. And I stopped and stared at them. Then I raised my hand, smiled and waved. They all started to play again, laughing and chanting some song with uzungo in it. On that day….it was the most beautiful part of not having indoor plumbing.