Angonia for the Holidays

     With no "out of country" vacation time, a 3 month ban on travel outside of your site's province, and limited Mozambique friends or just acquaintances at site.  The boys of Chitima took a Holiday weekend trip to the coldest place in Mozambique that just so happens to be in the hottest  province of Moz.  Sound backwards? Yeah well it’s Africa so just roll with it like everything else illogical we volunteers experience.  For Christmas 2015 and my first Christmas away from family, my roommate and I traveled up to our fellow (Tetie) volunteers‘ house, Alejandra and Michelle, in Angonia Tete for some holiday cheer, good company, and great food. 
    The Chitima Holiday Vacation started the day before Christmas Eve after locking up the house and leaving Tximanga a boat load of cat food to hold him over for the vacay.  We headed down to the oven of a capital, Tete City, to meet up with the other three Moz25 volunteers we would be spending Christmas with and do some holiday shopping  for our secrete Santas and white elephant gifts.  Also some grocery shopping for the holiday meals to get important things you just can’t ever find at any volunteers’ site like, CHEESE.

 (Cramming food outside the store into our backpacks for the pleasantly unpleasant 4-hr chappa ride.)

     (Yeah that's an entire gallon bag of cheese, the cravings are a real thing)

     After the grocery shopping mission, and a 4 1/2-hr 22 person minivan taxi ride; we all arrived in the delightfully cool village of Angonia.  Really though.  After leaving Tete City that morning which was around 100 degrees and slowing feeling the breeze in the taxi turn from scorching to refreshingly cool.  It was amazing to step out into a place that was a comfortable low 80s with a nice breeze.  For a hot minute it felt like I had ended up back in the Midwest. There were pine trees and green grass with the sense of seasons changing as you could feel the crisp wind bringing some rain with it.  A little rain and a couple days in the high 70s, this was definitely the closest thing to a white Christmas in Africa that you could get.
    The next 2 ½ days we did all the classic Christmas events we could: listened to holiday music (Michael Buble on blast), watched Christmas movies (White Christmas, The Grinch, and of course Elf), made awesome breakfest and dinners along with Christmas COOKIES, and opened actual wrapped Christmas gifts. 

 (Santa musta been sweating bullets when he made the trek out here)

 (BACON, french toast with apricot jam, and  REAL coffee)

(It was a bad ass Hawaiian Tee and a slick ball cap. Thanks Ale!)

 (A whole tray of BACON, thanks to our Zimbabwe ex-pat friend Blaine.)

     After all the fun and cheer and absolute bliss of being in weather below 90 degrees; Drew and I headed back to Chitima the day after to get back Tximanga, house projects, and some much needed laundry. 
    So, even though I wasn’t spending the Holidays with all you people I love and miss, hope ya’ll had an awesome Christmas yourselves! It was a good Christmas in Africa and I was very thankful to spend it with a good group of people and be able to enjoy each others company and our attempts at having a traditional westerner holiday with a few little twists. 

(And the gift that keeps on giving continues still in Africa.... Getting Iced)