Purple and Dry for the Drips

Today has been a miserable, weezy day. I have a walloping case of allergies brought on, I am convinced, by the dust that reigns king in our house and leaves your feet a lovely reddish-brown if you forget to put on your chinelos while walking around. I seem to get an allergy attack about once a week here in Mozambique, the relentless sneezing and sniffling rendering me completely useless for at least 24 hours.

As if that weren’t enough, allergies make me hot. Not the kind of hot that would make the boys of Chimoio line up in front of our house for a glimpse of the goddess that lives behind the wall of bougainvillea and hibiscus. I mean temperature hot. The hundreds of unrealized sneezes and constant sinus pressure make my head throb and pulse rise. It’s almost the same feeling I get after a good half hour on the treadmill, only with no effort required beyond stuffing wads of toilet paper in my nostrils and occasionally going to the kitchen for a glass of water to wash down a pill or two. The only problem is that the pills bring no relief and, now that summer has hit central Mozambique with full humid force, I don’t even have the silver lining I enjoyed back in July that my allergies chase away the cold of winter.

So basically my day has consisted of sitting in front of the small fan in the living room wondering how on earth the body can produce so much mucus in such a short amount of time. Yesterday I was fine. Clear nose, non-itchy eyes, no pseudo-menopausal hot flashes. Tomorrow I will be fine again, as it goes week after week. But today…that’s another story altogether. I tried to translate a budget from Italian to English for this timber project Ricardo is putting together, but gave up after my nose dripped onto the mouse pad of my laptop. In the course of the afternoon, I managed to go through an entire roll of toilet paper!

Speaking of such things, nose-blowing became the cause for a fight amongst my housemates last week. I haven’t mentioned it yet on the blog, but we now have a 6th member in our domestic community, Rogério. Yet another one of the boys from the business school back in Rio, Rogério came to Chimoio about 2 weeks ago for a short-term volunteer assignment with ACDI/VOCA, a local organization that works with smallholder farmers’ associations (and where I did a brief stint as a volunteer during my first month here). Before coming to Mozambique, Rogério worked as an investment banker and lived with his parents in a flat in Leblon, one of Rio’s most upscale neighbourhoods. The culture shock that has come about after Rogério joining our modest household has been both amusing and supremely frustrating.

As I mentioned in an entry soon after arriving in Chimoio, one of the things sorely lacking here is the convenience of a well-stocked grocery store where you can find the same quality items week after week. Here we rely on Shoprite, a sad excuse for a supermarket where a good portion of the food is expired and you will almost never find the same selection of items from one shopping trip to the next. Shoprite can’t even be counted on for staple items like paper towels or ground beef or juice. So when something good appears, the strategy is to buy as much of it as possible and create a stockpile in our pantry, hoping that we won’t run out of whatever the item is until the next lot has been delivered to Chimoio.

The problem started when Rogério, a chronic, honking nose-blower, grabbed a handful of napkins on his way out the door to play basketball with some guys from ACDI/VOCA. Ricardo noticed the wad of napkins and yelled out after Rogério,

“Que porra é essa, cara? Você pegou metade do pacote de guardanapos!” What the hell, man? You took half the package of napkins!

Rogério, already past the porch, illustrated his intentions with a loud, snotty honk into one of the napkins. “I’m going to play basketball, bro. My nose runs when I get out of breath.”

“Porra, meu irmão, usa papel higiênico então!” Damnit, use toilet paper instead!

Rogério looked back at Ricardo as if he were crazy. “O que? Toilet paper? You’ve gotta be kidding. That stuff in the bathroom is like sandpaper. No way I’m going to make my nose raw with that shit.”

Granted, Rogério had a point. For the last month, the only toilet paper available at Shoprite has been this single-ply, perfumed, bright purple stuff, certainly a reject from the South African market. Whatever chemicals they use for scent and color have the unfortunate effect of drying out the toilet paper to the point that it feels like an industrial file on your tender parts.

Nonetheless, napkins are an especially scarce commodity at Shoprite and, in the total absence of Kleenex in Chimoio, we have all adapted to using toilet paper for blowing our noses – even if it is purple and rough. We all agree that chapped noses and bums are much less painful than the embarrassment of running out of napkins and having to provide guests with neatly folded triangles of purple toilet paper next to their dinner plates.

Not quite willing to believe that toilet paper was the only option, and suspecting that his friends were screwing with him like they often do, Rogério continued on with his stack of napkins to the basketball game. Two hours later he came back red-faced, sweaty, and wiping his nose with the back of his hand. I was sitting on the couch watching Mythbusters on our newly-fixed TV and, my attention totally fixed on the bridge about to be blown up by the scientists, barely registered Rogério walking past me. That is, until I heard the distinctive honk and snort of someone blowing their nose in the kitchen.

Blowing one’s nose in public is one of the major cultural taboos in Brazilian society. Unlike Americans – who generally feel right at home ridding themselves of snot in restaurants, in line at the bank, and in meetings – Brazilians are quite private about nose-blowing and consider an activity that should be strictly confined to the bathroom. Before Rogério’s arrival this was the practice for nose-blowing in our house, as 4 of the 5 residents were either Brazilian or, in my case, had lived in the country long enough to adopt its customs. But good old Rogério proved that, as is the case for most rules, there is always an exception.

And, as if the prospect of snot in the kitchen weren’t offensive enough, I nearly keeled over when I found Rogério using – you guessed it – NAPKINS to clean his nose. With my hands on my hips, mouth slightly agape, I just stared at him for about a minute. He wadded up the freshly-used napkins and threw them in the trash, then grabbed another handful from the package and started to walk away. I gave an exasperated sigh and threw my hands up in the air.

“Didn’t you hear what Ricardo said about using toilet paper?”

“Yeah, but I thought he was just messing around.”

“Não, Rogério. You’ll see. The next time we go to Shoprite there probably won’t be any more napkins. How’s that going to look if a client comes over for tea and there is a big roll of toilet paper in the middle of the table?.”

“Fique tranqüila, Ali.” Rogério shot me the kind of look that is generally reserved for mothers when they chide their kids about putting the cap on the toothpaste and not leaving clothes on the floor.

Whatever. I was frustrated, but decided to cut Rogério a little slack. After all, he’d only been in Chimoio for a couple of weeks and didn’t really understand yet how this place works…

The next morning I went into the kitchen to start preparing lunch for everyone. Cooking has become an integral part of my daily routine, and I actually enjoy the challenge of making a meal for 6 given the lack of ingredients and the fact that we have no oven. I was especially proud of my creation that day. I pan-fried some pork chops with spicy mustard sauce, made perfectly fluffy white rice, and prepared homemade applesauce as an accompaniment.

The food turned out so nicely that I decided to actually set the table instead of letting everyone serve themselves directly from the pot as we usually do. I organized everything on our new dining table, set out plates and silverware, and prepared a pitcher of water. Outside I heard the gate open, the heavy chain clanking against the metal, and I ran back to the kitchen to get the final touches for the meal – napkins and serving spoons. Only there were no napkins, just the empty plastic wrapper left on the pantry shelf, testament to one of my housemates who was too lazy to throw away the packaging. Just then everyone walked in the house, ready for lunch.

“Rogério!!!!” I gave him dagger eyes as I yelled, “There are no more napkins!!!!”

“Foi mal, bro. Sorry, man. I used them all yesterday.”

“Used them for what?”

“Ah, you know, I had to blow my nose. The heat here makes my snot run.”

“Seu filho da puta!!! Son of a bitch! We told you yesterday to use toilet paper instead!!”

I was furious. Letting my ego get the best of me, I stormed out of the kitchen and plopped down in front of the TV, turning on the Style Channel, something I knew was bound to irritate my male housemates. Ricardo took over the conversation in my place.

“Porra, Rogério. You know what this is? It’s something that a momma’s boy does. Someone who has lived in the lap of luxury their entire life and has never gone without. Someone who’s always had a nanny or a mom to go out and buy more napkins. This is a community, man. You don’t know how it is around here.”

Just to prove his point, Ricardo went to the bathroom and brought back a roll of the gaudy purple toilet paper. “See? This is what we have to use now.” He plunked the roll next to the pork chops and sat down at the table, tearing off an exaggeratedly large section of tissue to use in place of a napkin.

Rogério shook his head and walked away, cursing Ricardo the whole way back to his room. I gloated silently from my position on the couch, happy in an immature way that Rogério had gotten that humiliating lecture…

After an entire evening of receiving the silent treatment, Ricardo and I decided that it was time to talk things out and start behaving like adults. We asked Rogério to come to the dirt lot that doubles as our backyard, and had a long discussion about what it really means to live in a house with 6 people. At the end of it, we had all apologized and vowed to be more tolerant, more understanding. As not to be too sensitive, the boys parted by telling each other vai tomar no cú, the true sign that things are okay between guys – they tell each other to piss off.

The trick to making a community like ours truly work is that everyone must be willing to give up his or her ego, the part inside us that insists on being “right”, that latches onto feelings of jealousy and irritation and perfection, that enables a life concentrated on and fueled by the self.

We are definitely not there yet. I am definitely not there yet – be it in my role as a housemate, as a professional trying to negotiate with difficult colleagues, or as a girlfriend. But each petty fight I am able to recognize as a symptom of my ego getting the best of me, the closer I come…

The final component necessary to make a multi-cultural, multi-person household run smoothly is humor, especially since Gemelli, Rico, and Rogério would dismiss concepts such as ego and self as new agey babble. Laughing at a difficult, frustrating situation is a less abstract way of letting go of the self, rising above the situation. By finding the humor that underlies all of our daily interactions, I am able to tolerate them much better…

Rogério now goes through an entire roll of toilet paper every two days, his incessant nose-blowing echoing through our poorly-insulated walls. I managed to consume an entire roll myself today thanks to my allergies. There is still no white toilet paper (or napkins, for that matter) at Shoprite.