29/03/10

Returned to Inharrime today. I think the perfect vacation is when you are both sad to be leaving and happy to be returning and thus I had had the perfect vacation. It was wonderful to see all my friends and get a little break from day-to-day life in Mozambique (air conditioning, Thai food, Chinese food, ice cream, etc), but Inharrime has really become my home now and I wanted to get back. And that was only reaffirmed when I returned to girls running up to me for hugs, yelling my name excitedly. One said, rather sadly, “where did you go? We thought you left. Are you going to leave us again?” Some days here it drives me nuts to say hi to every single person I walk past, but in Maputo I really missed it. And I hated my anonymity in Maputo. In Inharrime many of the kids in town greet me by name, most of the people around town know I am a teacher, and even those people who don’t know exactly who I am or why I am here know I am not just a South African tourist. But in Maputo I am just another white South African tourist, back to being harassed by street vendors calling out “hello my seesta” and other phrases in broken English. And as if to reaffirm this, I had only been back in town for a minute when I heard someone call out “Professora Anata!”
Today on the bus the man sitting behind me must have heard me speaking on the phone in English because he tapped me on the shoulder and asked “are you with the Peace Corps?” And then in surprisingly good English he asked “pardon me, I am asking if you know how to find the address of a Peace Corps teacher. I tried emailing the Peace Corps. I know only that he lives in Chicago.” I laughed only in my head and politely apologized and told him no.