26/04/10

First day of the second trimester today, nice to get back into the swing of things.
My two friends just had their house robbed for the third time, so they now have to move houses. After the first two times they were given the option to leave but they very bravely and admirably decided that they had been at their site for well over a year and were now a part of their community, so they didn’t want to have to recreate that in a new place with only a few months left in their service. But enough is enough, so now we are just all hoping that they will be able to stay at the same school at least, especially since they only have two trimesters left here and having to switch schools now would be a nightmare.
There are many used clothing markets in Mozambique, and Africa, filled with all the clothes you donated to Goodwill 10 years ago. Literally, all the clothes come from Europe and America, with all the brands you recognize. The Africans refer to these used-clothing markets as the “dead mulungu” (mulungu is the word for foreigner) markets. When asked why, it was explained that it was assumed that all the clothes in the markets where from dead mulungus, because why else would someone give away perfectly good clothing?