Hello, you.
It has been ages since I last came to you, and while I apologize I would also like to reassure you that it is most likely that nothing of real excitement has happened since then.
I did plant a garden. And like any activity, gardening in Mozambique turned out to be different than gardening in the States. Not that I have ever gardened in the States, since I have not. But I have dug some holes, and walked in other people's gardens, and watched a few people gardening, so I feel like I have a pretty good idea of what it looks like. If you are a gardener, I am sure you would fully appreciate the trauma of going to create a new garden, and discovering that the entire plot is filled with trash. I promise I am not being overly sensitive. It wasn't a pop bottle and a few plastic bags half stuck in the ground. It was some serious piles of trash of any and all nature buried in the ground. I only dug a few feet deep, so I may never know just how deep it went, but for me there was no escape. My two conclusions are that 1) that space had been used as an extremely large trash pit and then covered back up or 2) someone thought they might be able to grow the products that they buried. I am here to tell you that even if you do plant an old syringe, a syringe-tree will not grow. Sadly. Nor will plastic-bag-vines, or glass-bottle-bushes. Disappointment of a most acute kind must have met with whoever it was that took such pains to plant these little treasures.
The garden, despite these odds, is growing. My heartiest plant so far is the zucchini, which is a surprise since I had heard that zucchini is impossible to grow here. Perhaps they won't produce. At this point, I don't really care too much. It gave me a week's worth of something to do and now provides me with something to look at every morning, so I'm satisfied.
My latest project is a girls' group that I am taking over from a PCV that started it last year. It is a group that will be between six and ten girls in the secondary school, and is focused on health, education, gender roles, and, if my impression proves correct, dance performances. What dance has to do with HIV or gender equality is still a little obscure, but I am sure they will, in time, make me see why the group should be so focused on dancing on national holidays. So far I have hosted one meeting, so there isn't much to report other than the new knowledge that I have a extremely hard time understanding fourteen year old girls who speak Portuguese quickly in a classroom that echoes a lot. Who would have thought?
I have been privileged enough to collect a few new common myths. Most of them I have gotten from conversations with my neighbor, who is proving to be a good source for learning about common misconceptions. And he bakes bread. A very convenient combination.
MYTHS:
1)Animals automatically transfer their blood to a person when they bite a person.
2)If a ferocious animal bites a person, their strange blood will cause the person to die and then turn into that animal. The solution to this is to go to a traditional healer and have your blood let in small, ornamental lines on your chest, waist, or forearm.
3)Every mean animal has venom. This includes, but is not limited to, the lion, crocodiles (which I recently learned live in the bush around my town), hippopotamus, all snakes, hyenas, and domestic dogs.
4)All African Americans can speak and understand Portuguese.
5)There are only approximately 200 African Americans in the USA.
6)Jackie Chan and Jet Lee are brothers.
7)Gray hair comes from not getting enough rest, thus if a PCV goes on holiday to the US and rests enough she will come back with no gray hair! (I made this myth up, when Gina's students were teasing her about having come back from the States with youthfully brown hair. I am pretty sure they believed me, which I'm ok with but hope doesn't somehow come back to haunt me.)
8)The reason I don't want a second boyfriend in Mozambique is because I don't like black people. (I'm not so sure two years is going to be long enough to dispel this one, but I am trying one person at a time. Although, there is one obvious solution...)
It may be interesting to know that I was slightly electrocuted when I foolishly decided to watch a movie with earbuds in during a storm. Please believe me when I say that not only is it not fun, but it is also terrifying and surprising to be electrocuted by a power surge caused by lightning. Don't worry, though. My hearing quickly returned to normal and my love for Harry Potter movies is not even close to being diminished. Not that I can watch them anymore, since my computer's speakers and audio jack were fried...

I believe that is all for now. I will leave off with this last request:

please be careful what you donate to clothing drives, because one never knows when that old t-shirt with the Confederate flag will end up being worn by a Mozambican.