Every morning I brush my teeth next to the casa de banho(bathroom), along a small stone boarder that is about ankle high and divides our property from the neighbor’s. When I brush my teeth I’m facing the neighbor’s house but usually it’s early and not many people are out and about so I’m not just staring at someone, until the other day. In the morning I was looking over to the side at the trees, looking for birds as I could hear them singing. Next thing I know I hear the neighbor yelling something at her kids as they are walking towards the street. I look up, and lucky me, my neighbor is standing on her porch, topless. I must say that an overweight woman walking around topless is one small reminder I’m in Africa, as this is not even considered abnormal here. Mama Celeste made some matapa and it was really good. Matapa is a a traditional Mozambican dish made from chopped casava leaves, coconut and ground peanuts all cooked together for hours. My PCV sister, Anna, came to visit in the evening as well. She’s my sister since she had the same host family two years ago, and that was Mama Celeste’s first PCV. It was really good having the chance to talk to her about PC and being a Volunteer in Moz. We had plenty to talk about and spent a few hours discussing things.
The next day I was brushing my teeth again when I was fortunate enough to witness my neighbor topless on her porch again. She was just walking around not sure what she was doing, I didn’t want to look long enough to find out. Trust me this is one of those things that is better sight unseen. Anna treated me to lunch at one of the local barracas(bar), Casa Dos Dois, and a couple other PCVs joined us. They are about the only place in town where you can buy meat. We had a steak lunch with xima, a staple in Moz, and a tomato and onion salad. Xima is heavily processed cornmeal that is made extremely thick, to the consistency of Play-do, and has no flavor. It’s really good at absorbing any liquid, so it’s usually served with a sauce over top. The steak looked so good, it’s the first time I’ve seen beef since I’ve been here, and being from Ohio it’s very strange going a long time without red meat. We weren’t given forks and knives right away so we started to eat the African way, with our hands. I picked up my steak took a bite and started to pull, and pull, and pull, and wasn’t getting the meat to tear. After about two minutes of working on it I finally got my first bite of red meat since I left the US. It was really good even though it was undoubtedly the toughest steak I’ve ever had in my life. When the fork and knife came it didn’t help out tremendously. Using both the fork and knife didn’t help out that much. I ended up using my hands and the knife to butcher my way through it, but it was worth all the effort. When I got home that night Mama Celeste had made the usual rice and beans but gave me something extra, piri-piri. Piri-Piri can mean a couple things here, either the African Bird’s Eye Chili or hot sauce they make from the chilis, either way it is delicious. Mama Celeste watched me as I ate the little green hot pepper to see if it was too hot for me. I loved ever minute of it, I really enjoy spicy foods and this was my first experience with anything spicy here. Mama Celeste was very surprised that I could handle the heat, they are spicy little peppers but not too bad. Before Anna left she gave me a gift, a PC English Theater shirt. Getting free t-shirts are equal to gold in PC, so I pretty much just won the lottery.