smell ya later, lugela!

2/24/08
And the fun continues. Yesterday Celso, Geny, and I settled in to our little pensão in Lugela, the land of mountains and maloocos. Malooco means crazy person. Lugela has never failed to provide its fair share of people, who if I didn’t know better, I’d suspect were possessed by demons. I’m just waiting for a holy man to arrive and cast the malooco demons into one of the many herds of goats that roam about here, who would inevitably hurl themselves off the side of a cliff. Back to what I was saying…it’s become the norm to get hexed by maloocos every time any non-native Lugellan is in town. I take their babbling in Manhawa and carrying on to be their way of saying, “welcome to Lugela! I’m nuts!” Point of my story: I got hexed by a Lugellan malooco…again.

Last night there was a light drizzle so I thought I’d enjoy the lovely outdoor shower, which amounts to a bucket of water behind a wall in the corner of the garden. The lantern ran out of lighter fluid so the guard gave me his flashlight. So I gingerly set up shop in the shower: placed my towel and clothes on the ledge above me, finagled the flashlight on the ledge so I could have a little light, grabbed the soap and a cup of water and enjoyed the peace and serenity of rural Africa. And then I heard the thunder rolling in. Trovuado. There was a storm rolling in over the mountain, and within 5 minutes it was beginning to come down. So I grabbed my towel and my clothes that were getting wet, and tried to quickly pack things up. And then it happened…I reached for the flashlight only to clumsily knock it over the back wall of the shower. Panic! Have you ever spent the night in a place with no electricity? It’s dark. Really dark. And the red clay becomes very slippery when wet. And I had no idea what was behind the wall. I thought the flashlight fell into the neighbor’s yard. I got the sort of panic you get when you’re a kid and accidentally send a ball or frisbee flying over the fence into the curmudgeonly neighbor’s backyard. Only this time it was pitch black, there was a massive thunderstorm brewing, I was wet, half-dressed, and pathetic looking, and with my luck, the neighbor was a Lugela malooco.

So what did I do? I tried to tiptoe around the edge of the shower wall until I made my way to the back, where I would hopefully find the flashlight. In doing so, I lost my footing on a rock, slipped on the red clay, and landed in a pile of dirt. Smooth. On a positive note, I made it to the back of the shower. On a negative note, the flashlight had landed light-down in the mud. So I sat there covered in mud waiting for a flash of lightning so I could see where the flashlight was. What started out as me trying to wash my sunblock off ended up with me soaking wet and covered in mud. Not my best shower. I quickly rinsed the mud off because I was certain that if I stayed out there any longer, God would make another attempt at my life via lightning bolt.

Today we were supposed to have both the men and women’s focus groups. Well, the chefe de bairro (neighborhood boss) didn’t pull through and only managed to organize the men’s group. This means that the women are tomorrow, so we can’t leave here until 3pm, and I won’t get home until 7pm.

Not cool Lugela. Not cool.

2-25-09
After two days of the best that Lugela has to offer, I was determined to make today better. I woke up with the sun and enjoyed the fresh morning air in the garden. Out of nowhere I was surrounded by what appeared to be bumble bees, zipping between the flowers. Upon closer inspection, I saw that they were hummingbirds! Probably the smallest birds in the world. No joke, they were the size of my thumbnail. I tried to get pictures with my camera but I couldn’t get them in focus. The little buggers really move!

After an afternoon of battling my new Manhawa-speaking research assistants, I managed to get the women’s focus group done, and then headed back to Quelimane.