Happy Friday!

This is my Friday...

I woke up around 8:30 after oversleeping an hour because my cell phone doesn't have a snooze feature and my alarm clock requires AAA batteries that I can't seem to find here. I took a quick shower and, when getting dressed, noticed that the clothes hamper in our room has been slowly accumulating over the week and is now full to the brim. I am almost out of clean underwear, and Ricardo and I are traveling on Monday to Maputo and then on to Brasil for a 3 week getaway.

I asked Dona Margarida to be sure and wash the clothes in our hamper today and she told me it wouldn't be possible to do any laundry because there was a water shortage again in the house. I went outside and looked at the tank and, sure enough, there was only a splash of water left. It's been a week now that water from the city system hasn't come into our tank. We had to call the firefighters out here with their hose on Wednesday, and they put in about 1,000 liters. We ran through that quickly, and now are left with no water once again.

Even for Chimoio, a week with no city water is strange, so I asked Dona Margarida to go to the utility company and see if our water had been cut off due to a late bill or something. The more I thought about it, the more I was certain that my lazy, unorganized roommates had failed to pay the water bill on time while Ricardo and I were in Maputo last week. Turns out I was wrong. The water company told Dona Margarida that the shortage was a city wide problem and - paciência - there should be water in no time.

Really that means that we might go another week with no city water. Mozambicans love to use this phrase - D'aqui a nada - no time from now. When you hear that, you know that the person is just giving you false hope. D'aqui a nada means that you will wait hours, days, even weeks for whatever it is you need NOW.

So now water...I'm already thinking about what my suitcase will be like. Full of dirty, dirty clothes. Hopefully we'll be able to call the fire truck out to the house again, although I have my doubts because it is a weekend. Otherwise, our first stop in Maputo will likely be a laundromat.

I ate some cheese and a granola bar for lunch, washed down with a Diet Coke (!) from the case Rico and I purchased in Maputo last week and put in the back of the jeep to bring to Chimoio. I am wholly unsatisfied with my lunch. What I'm really craving is some meat - a big steak, some picanha, lamb chops, whatever. Point is we don't have it here at home and I am not about to walk to Shoprite in the insane heat. Fortunately, in less than 10 days I'll be back in the land of the carnivorous, aka Brasil.

I've been working most of the day writing my latest project proposal. This time around it's a timber project to establish a factory near the Zambezi river and produce furniture and other wooden articles for both the Mozambican market and for export. It's a huge, huge project. Definitely the largest Agrolink has worked with to date. It has me stressed out, but not yet to that desperate state that comes in the last week before deadline. I still have most of December to write, so I'm relatively on track...

Ricardo has been in Malawi all week meeting with potential clients (I was supposed to go as well, but stayed behind to work on the timber project). He is on his way back to Chimoio and should arrive within the hour.

Until then, it's e-mail and blogging for me... Happy Friday to everyone, and I miss you dearly!