Hot and Dry

We’ve had several people follow up on our water situation after we wrote about the drought affecting our region especially with all the international news about Somalia and the Eastern Horn. It’s dry here where we are, but no one is starving. We did get one big storm on Teachers Day, so that replenished our wells temporarily, but now a couple weeks later water is just as difficult as before. We’ve made it by this week on just six 20 liter buckets. Luckily we manage our personal water situation conservatively, so we’ve never run out of drinking water, unlike Romão, who routinely uses his last liters for bathing or washing his shoes, and then complains at dinner time that he has no water to cook rice. We’re still in the dry season, so even though it’s extra dry, it’s not unexpected, but if rainy season doesn’t start on time, people will really start to worry. Locals have already tilled their little plots of land and are ready to plant corn as soon as the first showers arrive. This week brought a major heat wave. Just today our thermometer recorded 98° indoors and 109° outside in direct sun, and we’re lucky to live in a relatively cool high plateau site for Mozambique, our friends down in the Zambezi valley regularly get readings at least 10 degrees warmer than us. Luckily we have the keys to the computer lab, the only air conditioning in the entire town. We’ve been coming up with things to do on the computer just to escape the oppressive heat. Luc gets especially overheated regularly sweating through his shirts. One of our Peace Corps buddies Audrey texted us from her hot hot site down near Tete city wondering if she could get water poisoning. We also drink lots of water, and even though we’re not worried about water poisoning, we decided to count how many liters of water we drink. Janet weighed in at 4.5 liters and Luc at a mighty 7+ liters in one day. We’re definitely getting our 8 cups a day.