A Visit to the Countryside

Most people here refer to the countryside disparagingly as "the bush".
The term bush is only relative though. The many small villages in our
district generally lack electricity, medical facilities, and places to
buy things- all amenities which we enjoy here in our town. But i am
sure many people in the city consider our living situation "the bush"
and many people in the more developed parts of the world might
consider the entire African continent as bush! Most people here try to
avoid the countryside, so when a student invited us to visit his
family in a small village about an hour's walk away he was very
honored we accepted. Our hosts greeted us in the traditional manner of
the Chewa, which includes clapping and bowing for men and squating for
women, and they showed us to a small hut where they had set up some
chairs. The use of Portuguese is limited in the more rural you go, so
we made the most of our small Chichewa repertoire and Zacarias
translated the rest. Luckily we brought our photo album, with pictures
of our wedding, family, Spain, and Yosemite, which they loved. They
were particularly intrigued by the picture of paella and tried to
figure out what all the ingredients were. We visited the small primary
school and attended a short religious service as part of our visit and
then waited out a major storm under their straw roof, occasionally
shuffling our position to avoid the multiple leaks. Zacarias told us
about his hopes of completing high school and becoming either a pilot
or a journalist. His first choice seemed suprising considering he has
never even seen an airplane; we told him it might be unrealistic since
the country of Moz has no operational air force and ten civilian
planes in the national airline. On our departure we were given food as
gifts, a large bag of avocados and a sack of fresh corn, which Luc
attempted to carry on his head on the hour walk home, to the great
amusement of passers-by. But we concluded this was not an effective
method of transport for silly foreigners like us.