16/03/10

I was carrying avocado peels today when two of the younger girls from the orphanage came running up to say hi. “What are these from?” I quizzed them. They responded but it wasn’t the word I knew for avocado so I corrected them. They both said “oh, that was Changana [a Bantu language spoken in Maputo province], I don’t know the word in Portuguese.”
A little while ago four of my female colleagues were spending the weekend together at a house where I have been many times and always felt incredibly safe. The bathroom of this house happens to be outside (which is normal here). As one of the girls was leaving the bathroom that night, a man grabbed her from behind, putting her in a headlock and pressing a rusty screwdriver into her neck. He led her into the house and basically created a hostage situation, demanding money and a camera from the other girls who only wanted him to stop pushing the screwdriver into their friend’s neck.