A day in the life

I am in one of my extremely vivid Larium dreams right now. I am in some sort of situation that is completly not my life at all. All the people in my dream are people I know from different times and places of my life but for some reason they are all in this dream world as well, but the way that I know and relate to the all is completly different from real life. This dream is dragging on and on as if it were a full day and everything feels so real. Even my sence of smell is more real in my dreams since I started taking Larium.

Suddenly i am awakened by the sound of screams! Wait, no thats roosters...and now is dogs...and pigs squeeling too...and now cats. It is still dark but all the animals in the town have decided that it is time to wake up at about 3:30 in the morning. The mix of animal noisies blurs together and creates what I would amagin to be the sound track to hell. The wind is blowing hard, cold air is pooring through small cracks and the vent hole at the top of the wall and my room is getting colder by the second, good thing I am wearing a sweater, sweat panta and thick socks. The wind is blowing twigs and dust on the tin roof above me and i combination with the cats on the roof it sounds like im in the inside of a snare drum. i get up an relieve myself over the black bucket I have in my room because the out hose is always locked in the night.

I then go back to sleep for another round of Larium dreaming. At 6:30 I am woken up by my host mother and told that it is my turn to takea bucket bath. I walk into the bathing room which is a small room with a small drain at one end and underwear hanging from the walls (it is not considered proper in mozambique to dry your underwear outside so people do it in their bathing rooms). The air is still cold but the water is worm so I crouch over the bucket and bath myself. After i get dressed i eat breakfeast. Today I am a lucky boy my homestay mother made me frenchfries and a deep fried egg for breakfast. I only get this about once a week. Usually it is peanutbutter on bread. I eat my food and drink tea before grabbing my language books and note books before heading to class at 7:30.

I walk over to a neighboring coleague`s house were i and three others share the attention of our Portugese teacher for two hours. We take a five minet break to eat a snack that each of our home stay mothers have packed for us. Mostly we get juice and crackers ant are slightly sweet. The crackers make me think about hard tack that sailors used to survive off of, because we all have been eating these for almost 2 months now every day for snack once in the morning once in the afternoon.

After Language class we go to our technical training session where we learnign about how to become good peace corps health volunteers in Mozambique and sometimes we get guest speakers from the Mozambiquean government or from the US embacy. Then we walk back home for lunch. I live down the road downhill so myself and my language class coleagues always spend about 15 min walking back home and 20 min walking back to tech class after lunch. My lunch us usualy plain pasta with vegtable oil, breat and a lemon soda. Today I am lucky, I have a little extra time to wash some cloathes durring my lunch break. I take two buckets of water I place my dirty cloathes in one bucket and soap them up and scrub them between my fists then I rinse them off in the bucket with clean water. Then I empty out the bucket with the dirty water and fill it up with clean water and rinse the cloathes out in the water for a final rinse. Then I squease them as best I can and hang them out to dry on the cloaths line beforegrabing my back pack and walking 30 min to the building where we are having a session on preserving our own health.

The woman that does all of our personal health sessions is the head doctor for the Mozambique Peace corps. She is supper funny and has tons of crazy stories, but in general she is a very sweet woman and everyone is very happy when she comes to speak with us. if we ever get sick she is our main go to person.

Its about 4:30 now and we are finnished with our classes for the day. Now it is time for all of us to get in some chill time and hang out with eachother. There are just under 30 of us. Overall it is a very positive and easy going group. There has not been any drama to my knowledge and everyone gets along pretty well. So we hang out for a couple hours at a small bar/restaurant to chat. Im enjoying a nice dark South African beer and a piece of meat with spicky sauce becauce I do not eat dinner until 8. We have a cerfew of 7 so at 6.30 I am walking some people home. Less than a third of the group is male and a lot of the girls get cat called so I am walking a few of the girls that live by me homein a big group.

I am at home by 7 and my home stay mother is at night school and my father is about ready to head out to teach a night school class. I sit with the  2 year old girl and her 15 year old aunt and we watch Portugese who want to be a millionare and I do my Portugese home work. Then i take another bath (you want to take two baths a day when you live in a town where all the trash is burned) and at 8 I eat dinner (a bunch of rice with chichen in a salty tomato broth) Then I brush my teath, change into sweapants and a sweat shirt, climb under my covers and fall into a larium dream in the protective bubble that is my mosquito net.