The sights and sounds of africa

By the time you've lived somewhere for 20 months, everything that surrounds you has fallen under the category of "Normalcy." Very few things make you stop and stare. Indeed, very few things that you do make other people stop and stare.
I think that the people of Chicumbane are used to my "white person" quirks- namely the fact that I walk around the neighborhood accompanied by a pack of dogs, or that sometimes I have to chase them home brandishing a stick. After 20 months, these things are just part of the landscape.
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In the morning, I'm sometimes woken up by the soft scraping sound of my neighbor raking the sand. It's a comforting sound, knowing that somebody's taking care of the yard and it doesn't have to be me. (Hey, I bought the rake- fair exchange, right?) This, accompanied by roosters crowing and shortly after, the sound of speakers being turned on wafts music beats through my window. Sometimes, the music from different houses compete to see who can be heard by the most people, something that used to irritate me but has since become the background noise to everyday life.
By the way, it's getting COLD!!! I sleep with a jacket, sweatpants, socks, and two blankets. The tin roof above my head cools my house in the winter and heats it to sweltering in the summer. The only good thing is that when it rains, the pattering sound can be soothing. Although this, too, was something that I initially found disconcerting.
On my way to the latrine in the morning to dump out my xixi bucket, I pass chickens rummaging through piles of dead leaves, surrounded by peeping chicks I hear my neighbors greeting and talking to each other in local language, and sometimes my crazy misogynist neighbor yelling angrily at someone. If somebody nearby is burning their trash, the air smells of smoke. When I first landed in Africa, it was one of the first things I noticed- the constant faint linger of smoke. People burn their trash, burn firewood to cook, burn their land to clear crops.
After my breakfast and morning coffee (gotta love the French press) I head to work at the hospital, a pleasant 20 minute walk in which I usually pass a herd or two of cows and goats heading to pasture, and multiple fresh cow patties. When I first arrived at site, I complained ferociously about the difficulties of walking through sand and now no longer notice it. I'm hoping this means good things for my calves. Also along the way, I cross paths with students in uniform going to and from school, adults heading to work, women coming back from the field. Some of them greet me with "Bom dia" (good morning) or call me by name:
"Mana Vivana!" At all the houses I pass, people are sitting outside.
In the afternoon, I return home for lunch. This is about the time that children notice my open door and come by asking to color. They stand timidly at my door and call "da licenca!" ("Excuse me!") repeatedly until I tell them to go home and come back on the weekend. It's amazing how many times I turn away the same kids who apparently don't know the days of the week. If my neighbor isn't around to shoo them away, they may decide to hop into my trash pit and collect whatever treasures they find. (It's always kind of awkward when you pass children on the street playing with something that obviously came out of your trash pit. For this reason, all hygiene products and discarded medical supplies go into the latrine.) I think I'll need some time to adjust back to weekly trash pickups and garbage disposals...
Aside from the pounding of music, there's also the sound of chatter in Changana, children wheeling their squeaky wire trucks around or whipping a wooden top through the sand to make a sharp cracking noise and keep it spinning, the bleating of nearby goats or children crying (they sound the same).
In the evenings, I go to work where I inevitably encounter mosquitoes- a lot of them (Chicumbane is right next to the Limpopos River). The phase of the moon makes all the difference between intense darkness or well-lit streets. After it rains, there's the danger of falling into muddy puddles in the middle of the path.
Unless it's the weekend, when music from barracas plays until the wee hours of the morning, the neighborhood quiets down by 9pm or so. In the middle of the night, it is dead silent save for the occasional chorus of dogs barking. And rats running over my tin roof.
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At this point in my service, all of this is familiar to me. But the thought that in less than 5 months, I'll be leaving all this behind- probably forever- is sobering. It's one of the things that make me stop and just... be. Just soak in a little more of Africa.