I somehow managed to schedule a very uneventful weekend, but it was quite nice, actually. Friday I got quite a lot of work done on the contact list, and went over to my friend Cornelia’s house at 16h00 for a visit. Her new roommate from Brazil, Rubenita, as well as another Brazilian missionary, were there as well, making manioc “pancakes”, although they were not what we would call pancakes. Apparently you grate the manioc (cassava), press it through a cloth and leave it to let the water evaporate, or something like that, and a sort of coarse “flour” remains. This Rubenita simply put in a frying pan and mixed with margarine until it had a certain consistency and could be turned over. Normally you would eat it with condensed milk and coconut, but since we didn’t have any, we simply had it plain – it had an interesting texture and was really nice. After a nice visit with Cornelia it was almost dark, so she said she would take me home, but on the spur of the moment we decided she should just come over and watch a movie. So at least that was something social.
Yesterday I didn’t go anywhere, but had a lovely restful time, getting work done, doing stuff in the house and reading – I decided I shouldn’t despise this time, soon enough I will probably be longing for it again! I was at Woodrows’ for church today, and then went to a fairly new restaurant in town with Cornelia, Rubenita and Rosalina to celebrate Rosalina’s birthday (I had only found out about it on Thursday and it was a bit short notice). I was so glad that especially Rubenita could come along – the pace of the Portuguese conversation would have been considerably slower if it weren’t for her! We all found it incredibly interesting when Rosalina was talking about the course that she is studying, called “Communication for Development” and what she wants to do with it, namely go work somewhere in the “distrito” (like in a village) and help poor people. She had done a practical course in Namialo earlier this year and it was the first time that she had seen desperately poor people, she phoned her parents and cried – we, who as missionaries are so familiar with at least the stereotypical reality of poverty, even though we don’t see it every single day, were so amazed that a Mozambican could have had so little exposure to it! She and Claudia are both from Beira though, and I realise more and more that the centre and south of the country are like another world in some ways…
