The Sound of Music

One thing that is impossible to go unnoticed here in Mozambique, is the Mozambican love for music. Firstly, wherever you are, you can almost always hear some sort of music blaring somewhere. You can seriously be in the middle of a town which has no electricity, in the middle of the night and hear music bumping. Forget running water, cell phones, televisions, and lightbulbs, the Mozambican priority is a sound system complete with large speakers and an amplifier.
Moving off subject, Francelino and I made a trip to his original hometown this weekend, Manjacaze. We hopped on a bus at 6am and took it about an hour north, part way on narrow, dusty, and sandy roads to reach our first stop, his grandmother's house. We stopped at his aunt's house to leave our backpack so we wouldn't have to lug it along on our trip and his cousin accompanied us into the bush! We trekked along for about an hour, stopping to buy a bag of bread along the way. We passed lots of caniço (straw-like) round houses, water wells and pumps, and lots of cashew trees! Manjacaze's landscape is full of cashew trees, with the occasional mango, mafura, coconut, or eucalyptus tree mixed in. We finally arrived at Vovo's (Grandmother in Portuguese) house and she hurried out to greet us. We went and sat in one of her little round houses and, as a family member prepared hot water for us to take bucket baths, we sat and ate a hearty breakfast of tea, bread, cashews, and chicken (which she of course had personally killed for us earlier that day). When you arrive at someone's house here and have been travelling the first thing that they offer you is hot water to take a bucket bath. I have gotten used to this and it's actually really nice because after travelling you are almost always covered in a layer of dust and sweat. The day at her house was relaxing. We ate, took naps, sat outside and talked with her, and Francelino made a video with my digital camera of Vovo talking about her children, grandchildren, and telling stories, which was very entertaining. She wanted to kill a duck to cook for us at about 4pm but we had already eaten so much and had to be on our way to had to decline. She lives way out in the middle of nowhere with just her sister who is also elderly. I have no idea how old she is, nor does anyone, because she can't even tell you the year she was born in, but every day she does to her machamba (fields) and work to cultivate produce like corn, peanuts, tomatoes, and other crops depending on the time of year, amazing!
In the evening we left and went back to his aunt's house. We were welcomed by a group from her church that were sitting outside on grass mats drinking tea. I sat and chatted with them until they went on their way. The rest of the day mostly consisted of taking baths, eating dinner, and finally going to sleep!
On day two we went back to the road and got in a truck to bring us to the center of the village where Francelino's uncle works. He has a salon there where he cuts hair so we found him there and got a little tour of the “downtown” area. I, unfortunately, had drunk a few cups of water the night before and my stomach did NOT like the water there so I had a few hours of frequent bathroom trips and abdominal pain. We later got into another car to take us out to his uncle's house. There were so many people waiting for us! We met several of his aunts and so many cousins! I think there must have been 12 kids under the age of 13 running around. The afternoon was relaxing and we strolled around the area, took lots of pictures of the family, and ate lots and lots of delicious food. Cameras are not super common so we spent hours making videos of the kids dancing or taking pictures and then showing it to them.
All of the houses that we visited are not connected to electricity but two of the tree have a solar panel which charges a battery which they use to charge important necessities like cell phones, and of course to power their sound systems.
My other inspiration for the title of this blog post is that I watched the movie The Sound of Music with Francelino this week and he loved it and that made me really happy.