Stretched, twisted, rung out and then hung on the line….
Washing a load of laundry, with help from our dear Mozambican
Mae scrubbing our clothes by hand in laundry detergent, took an hour and a half.
She did the scrubbing in the detergent because my hands are to sleek and
smooth. The detergent cracks my skin right away. She laughs as I explain how
weak my muscles are compared to hers, and how soft my skin is from doing office
work and studying at University. She let me see if I was strong enough to pull
the water up from the well with a fraying rope tied to a five liter jug with
slots in the side to fill up as the jug plunks into the water that is about
nine meters below our feet. We laughed when I could fill up the 20 liter bucket,
but I couldn’t carry it with ease like she can.
We talked about how strong Mozambican women are. I told her
that I’m always amazed at the strength and perseverance of Mozambican Mamas. She humbly inquired with a simple phrase that
requires body language along with clear facial expression, “ah e’? “ meaning “for
real?” Its meaningless to try to flatter minha Mae Mozambicana. She wants to
hear why I’m saying they are so strong. So we talk for a while and she begins
to conceptualize that our comfy lifestyles in the western developed countries
doesn’t keep our arm muscles strength up to par for hand washing laundry by
directing my attention, with the subtle motion of her chin, to the broken
washing machine on the back veranda of our rental house in Chimoio. We chuckle
together and she teaches me more words in Matewe as we change the water two
more times. Then I wrung out one item at time and hung our dripping wet laundry
on the clothes line. Mae lets me know that the sun is strong enough to dry them
while they drip. We started the wash early enough for the sun to dry our
clothes before sunset.
She was absolutely correct. She knows her stuff. We finished
the wash at 11:30, and the clothes were nice and dry at four in the afternoon
after my hubby and I returned from an interesting afternoon in the city. We
managed to get a lot of paper work (my hubby and our accountant got tons of stuff
taken care of this morning) We attempted to sort out our foreign residence here
in Mozambique. There are some bumps in our path, so tomorrow morning we will
sit with the director of Immigration to find out what is our next step with
this process. So many things to do, and details to look into….now it’s time to
finish catching up on the national news with our dear friends before heading to
bed. Its interesting the filmography of the news….a witness to a crime is
interviewed and the camera is tightly zoomed in on his chest, their microphones
and a reporters hands…..some serious news to be praying for this country. We
are all praying for peace to reign. Ok, that’s all for now.
Off I go, not to be
to too brief when there is so much story to tell, but after this I’m going to
head to bead instead of writing late into the night because we have a bit of an
early morning tomorrow.
Lots of love,
Missionary Momma Mia
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