06/06/11

Btw, in addition to a school and an orphanage, this mission also has a bakery which generates a good deal of money. My father and I spent this morning helping distribute bread with Filipe, the delivery guy. The usual driver is still unavailable so my father drove the “bread truck” (a Isuzu pickup truck packed with crates of bread) and I tagged along to learn more about driving in Mozambique as I might have to sometimes after my dad leaves. After an hour or two of driving however, I was more than a little scared of the thought of taking the wheel. In addition to the confusion of driving on the left side of the road and the steering wheel being on the right side of the dashboard, the roads of this country are simply abysmal. The only paved road is the highway (and in the one and only). The rest are dirt roads full of bumps and dips that jostle even the best drivers. Throw in the lack of sidewalks and the multitude of people walking in the streets and you have a true nightmare for a little boy who’s only ever driven an automatic in the safe, sane streets of Champaign Urbana.
My fears aside though, it was fun going with my dad and Filipe. I got to help Filipe distribute bread at the many different stops we made and while neither of us speaks much of the others’ language, we spent a good amount of time talking and learning the languages from each other.
My father and I ate lunch in the dining hall with the Sisters and meninas (girls). It’s incredible how self sufficient the girls are at taking care of themselves. Even the tiniest ones that can’t be more than 3 or 4 years old were getting their own food and feeding themselves. In the afternoon, we tried studying Portuguese with limited success. A group of girl’s found us and proved quite distracting by teasing us, running around us, poking us, singing and dancing for us, and hugging us. They did help our pronunciation a lot though as they had no shame in correcting our bad accents.
In the evening we went into town to meet up with Ann for a drink and then dinner. Erin came halfway through dinner and it was really interesting hearing the PCV’s (Peace Corps Volunteers) talk about their experiences in and frustrations with the program.