Paul and Eli Blog in Moz

Ile is the exact opposite of Nacala­- in fact, as I write this it is pouring outside (we got 200 liters of water filled in under 10 minutes), where as in Nacala it never rained. Ile is small; actually ile is tiny. Looking out from behind our house you see only a handful of houses- the rest is open land and sky. The climate is much cooler, although the humidity makes it feel hotter. Also the market in Nacala was much much bigger than the one in ile, in fact, the entire food selection in ile is much simpler, although it does have the advantage of having cheap pineapple, which were rare in Nacala. So far, it´s great.

Getting to ile was a little bit of a challenge- all of our stuff was still in our house in Nacala, and had to be moved before we could go anywhere else. There was a little bit of a mad scramble at the last minute, logistics wise (logistics are very complicate here) but things worked out well. In fact, we got a 1st class flight up to Nampula, which was nice, and once there we were met by a Peace Corps driver/ all around handy-man who was up in the North fixing up houses. He took us in a Land Cruiser pick up truck, loaded all of our belongings, and then took us to ile the next day. I´m not sure that anything else would have fit in (or on) the truck.

We´ve been really happy with our reception in ile. People so far have been very friendly and welcoming. Our director took us to meet some of the important people in town (police chief, city administrator, local brazilian nun, Canadian shopkeeper- he´s from Toronto- etc.) We have been introduced to some of the teachers, who were working on the final grades of the year, and they all seemed excited to see us. One of the teachers came to our house, showed us around town, and took us to his house, where we watched pirated south African music videos on his TV. Then, since we had just moved in, the school took us out for dinner- and lunch the next day.

On one of our first days shopping in the market we met some German missionaries (although not actually missionaries- there are 2 nurses and a civil engineer, but very similar to missionaries), who have been very kind and had us over for lunch- very tasty sauerkraut.

As for our housing situation… For now, things are OK. We are litteraly a part of the school here, though, our house being attached to the building where the kids eat. We even share a wall with the kitchen! Right now there are only half a dozen kids staying here, waiting for their final grades, but once school starts there will be hundreds. The house is supposed to belong to the Director of Student Dorms, but he moved out because of the noise! The school tells us that we will have a new house soon, but I know that can mean in 6-8 months unless we push…. The house is pretty bare right now, there are 3 rooms with no kitchen, counters, closets, etc. Just 3 plain rooms, and since this should be temp housing, we aren´t doing much to build on it. (Although we´re adding some furniture and it is getting more comfortable- who knows, we could be here a while).

We have to thank everyone who gave us flashlights- they´ve come in handy lately! We haven´t had power for about 5 days, and it may be a few more weeks before we do!! Last week we were in our house when we saw orange and red light under our door, and heard a burning noise- I thought someone was welding outside our door! Turns out that a wire burned up, which is not surprising because students had connected a power strip to it, and other connetions to the wire were made with plastic bags and candy wrappers. So we didn´t have power. We thought it might only take a little while to fix that cable. And in fact, it would, the power people could have it fixed pretty quickly, excpet that the director of the student dorms (or LAR) decided not to pay the power bill, so on top of the burned cable, they cut our power! We won´t have a chance of getting it back until next month (and that means we have to wait to finish watching Lost! Aaaarg).

The only serious problem is a dispute Eli and I have over a word in Scrabble- I think she was angry because I was winning by 150 points, but maybe someone can check this word for us. I used Adz which is a noun (some kind of tool) and then I made it plural, so Adzs. If that´s not right someone let me know.

The other disadvantage of ile is that there is no cell phone coverage, but rumor has it that they are building a new cell tower that will be operational within a month. It hasn´t been confirmed, but if I start sending text messages, you´ll know. I hope everyone is doing well back home, things are very good here.

PJ and EO