15/11/10

Yesterday I went over to Ann’s and helped her paint her house. Her house is made of reeds and, like most people here who have reed houses, she had a layer of cement put on the inside about 5 feet up the walls. But since this cement layer is only about 2cm thick and made from the really awful quality Mozambican cement, it’s more of a formality and won’t do much in terms of security. The one bonus is that it gave us a paintable surface. The other drawback of Ann’s house is that there aren’t many windows, so it is very dark inside. The cheerful pink and yellow we painted did wonders to brighten up the house, both literally and figuratively, we just had to be careful not to paint too forcefully, otherwise the cement would crumble away under our brush.
I got a ride back out to my house from an interracial South African couple. I was completely blown away and happy to see that. It was probably naïve of me to think that the South Africans we get in Mozambique are an accurate representation of the whole country, but they certainly made it seem like you would never in a million years see an open interracial couple.