The first week in my new place: Let me just start out by saying, “I have no idea how I am going to survive for two years, not knowing how to cook.” I moved into a new place here in Namaacha. On Monday we walked into the place at 11:00 and there was nothing. No furniture, no food, nothing. By 12:00 Adam, my roommate and I walked back to our host families place for lunch. They found out that we didn’t have anything and they lent us pots and pans and silverware so that we could at least cook something that night.

That night we decided to cook some pasta. We didn’t have any sauce, nothing, except tomatoes and onion, which my host mother gave me and some spaghetti we bought at the market and some oil. We decided to put oil, onions and tomatoes in our pasta. We didn’t know how much oil to use, so we put a little in the pasta and it didn’t look like enough, so we put a little more and then a dash more. Long story short, our first meal in Mozambique was a hell of a lot of oil and a little pasta. Not very good! Our second meal: We went to Maputo to buy some things, so we ate lunch at a restaurant and then cooked dinner at our place. We had bought a frozen chicken, so we cooked that, which was actually really good, but let’s be honest with ourselves, all we had to do is throw it in the oven and make sure it didn’t burn. We were going to have a salad and we bought lettuce for the salad, but forgot to buy bleach. There are a lot of diseases you can get from lettuce if you don’t bleach it here. So we just had chicken, nothing else.

The third meal: This actually went really well. We had fried rice, with tomatoes, onions and green peppers. We were going to have that lettuce, but once again forgot to buy the bleach and we didn’t have a refrigerator yet, so we had to throw the lettuce away. The fourth meal: We had no food on Thursday, so we had French fries and cucumbers. Need I say more!

Fifth meal: Spaghetti and alfredo sauce, pretty easy, hard to screw that up. Sixth meal: Here’s where it gets a little interesting. So a couple things went wrong here! First, we didn’t start cooking the chicken until eight. Then, when we read the instructions we read it in Celsius, but thought it was for Farenheight. So we started cooking the chicken at a 180 degrees.

We thought that seamed really low, but didn’t question the directions. So after about an hour and a half of cook the chicken, which was not cooking at all, we went back to the instructions and found out that is was actually 350 degrees.

So we started cook it at the right temperature and then went to open the corn on the cob that we bought at the market. We opened it up, only to be surprised with a nice big maggot crawling out of the corn. Don’t worry, we threw it away, along with the other six cobs we bought. I guess I won’t buy corn on the cob at the local market. Other meals: We have also had many PB and J sandwiches, Hot dogs with bread and lots and lots of eggs.

So in short, I need to figure out this cooking thing, or I will starve to death. Other than the cooking, we have also been buying many things and slowly starting to make this place feel like home. We have had to buy just about everything, but the Peace Corps provided us with enough money to buy everything that we needed. It has also been very nice living here in Namaacha. My host family has been very helpful with the move and my little 8 year old host brother has visited me every day. Which I don’t really mind.

Sewing: So, I always made fun of my mom and my aunt and just about anyone that loved to sew। So here I am in my new home sitting in a chair, watching home improvement on my laptop and sewing curtains for the window।

I thought to myself, man I am turning into a little old grandma, all that was missing was the rocking chair. I don’t know which is worse, I am actually getting good at sewing or the fact that I was actually having fun.

More to come later, about my new place! David Hartness