Eid

Last Friday was Eid, the end of Ramadan. When I came back home after an early walk at 7.00 am, the whole village were gathering at the mosques. Everybody was dressed up in pretty, colorful clothes. The women and children stayed outside listening to the men singing and praying, the Imams had started singing already at 5.30. And since the closest mosque is only 30 meters from my house there was no way I could go back to sleep.

But that actually meant sleep in morning for me – usually they start at 4.00 am and sometimes even earlier. And of course they have really good loud speakers… That’s the only thing not so great with my house. Especially since my windows are nothing more than mosquito nets.

And - heading back to the house that morning I had an actual conversation in Portuguese with one of the staff from Russell’s. Albertina is her name and she speaks Portuguese, Makua, Makunde and a few words in English. She has 3 children and lives in Cariaco which means she has to walk approximately 10 km every day to get to work and then of course 10 to get back home at night.

My embregada didn’t show up for work either, which was totally ok since it is a big holiday. But it left me with a problem – I didn’t have enough water to last me the day, let alone the whole weekend. Thanks to my good friend Frank that problem was solved later, since he has running water in his house.

At night I was invited to a Potije (pronounced “pojtie”. Which is a South African dish named after the iron pot it is made in. It’s a stew and this particular one had lots of veggies, potaoes and buffalo meat) at Laura & Smitty’s house on the beach. It was delicious and I had a very nice evening.