miles

With enormous relief, I finally moved to Chimoio last week to live with Sara, my North Dakotan colleague, a woman of talent, kindness, and humor. She attends Mass in Portuguese and Shona, hosts starry-night dance parties with Peace Corps volunteers to usher in the New Year, and tents by herself in the bush to train rural preschool teachers with barely a 6th grade education themselves. She also keeps her leg-hair long to preserve water and for this alone I love her.

Chimoio is several hours inland from Beira, near the border of Zimbabwe, in the foothills of its Mvumba mountains. It is smaller, more rural, poorer. I loved Macarungo; but when I walk down the streets of this new home, I feel like I'm in a old-time Western. It's dusty and gritty. I like that. Mozambicans will tell you two things about Chimoio: 1) that it is cold, and 2) that they have very cheap bananas. Which is true. And not just bananas: tomatoes, greens, carrots, mangoes, basil, cashews, potatoes, green beans, beets, pineapple, everything. If Mozambique was a Piggly Wiggly, Chimoio would be the produce section.

Our house is comfortably weathered, open and full of light, with a screen door slamming, airy, and a large, messy yard full of things growing or barking or clucking or mewing. I call it The Farmhouse, but not because of the animals, but rather for how it makes me feel: relaxed, like singing Gillian Welch, and baking pumpkin muffins with raisins.

There are often kids on the property because Sara works with preschoolers and has invited them in, but in a controlled, reasonable way - lying on their stomachs coloring out in the machessa, tossing a ball around - and they leave when she tells them to. She set good rules which they follow because, after four years here, she gets the minds of African children.

We live only two blocks from one of our main AIDS partner organizations. I will work out of the The Farmhouse, though we don't have internet yet, so my posts will be limited for a time.

It means a lot to me to be here.