Waiting for a ride from Nimi's site to my own after spending the weekend there, this entry could be short!
Nimi's site is quite in the middle of nowhere, especially for being only an hour out of my city. It is an African village closer to what my original expectations were after training. Using a latrine, going to the market (just got a false alarm...) to find next to no produce, lighting lamps at night and seeing a very new, bright-faced school are all things I thought would be part of my new life, but whether good or bad I don't know.
And Nimi sees different things, different suffering than I do. He sees funerals 3 or 4 times a day because of AIDS. He hears of civil violence unheard of in the States. I'm really quite sheltered from most of that, and it almost feels like I'm not getting the full experience.
Nimi has organized a performance group from Maputo to come to his school, and we saw (I got picked up..where was I?) them perform - they're very good, clear and motivated. We went out for drinks afterwards and had a great time discussing world politics, African culture and stale crackers. Hopefully, I'll be able to get the same thing at my school, though I imagine the experience would be completely different.
I was able to hold my own in a quite complex discussion of democracy in Portuguese, and its various implementations. It helped that this group was from Maputo, where Portuguese is more native and people understand heavier accents more easily.
I'm currently reading "Watership Down". Dated, but still relevant.
Peace
John
