12/23/2016
The past 3 weeks I’ve been slowly working on making my house
my home. My roommate, Curtis, has been living in Namuno for one year now and
has one year left in his Peace Corps service. On my first day in our house,
Curtis offered to take his decorations out of the main living room so that we
could decorate together! Needless to say, I told him the living room was just
fine (he has a US flag and a few sports flag around the room along with some
local decorations). For the past year Curtis has been living in Namuno alone so
he was using one bedroom as his and the other to store sport, workout, and game
equipment. He cleared out the second bedroom prior to my moving in.
Additionally, he was using bookshelves/a dresser as kitchen shelves but let me
use it once I moved in.
And starting on day 2 in my site began the building. Since all
our kitchen supplies were on the ground, I began by building kitchen shelves.
Using leftover bamboo and tire from the market I built the shelves you can see
below! My town sells tire that has been cut up to various sizes and thicknesses
so I used tire-rope to lash the bamboo together. Fortunately, growing up I had
various opportunities to learn how to lash wood together to build structures.
One summer I spent an entire week with a friend (shout out to John Barth) just
building things out of rope and wood and learning about knots! In the past I have
built a trebuchet along with some other random stuff. After a few trips to my market’s
hardware stores and a few days, my kitchen shelves were complete! Next step was
to work on unpacking my bags and setting up my room.
Up until Wednesday night of this week (two days ago), I had
been sleeping on a thick sleeping bad on the ground. No bed and no mattress
upon my arrival to site. Peace Corps gave me clearance to buy a bedframe and
mattress for reimbursement, so I went out and bought a mattress. Unfortunately,
my town only sells bedframes for queen mattresses and I bought a twin so that
it would fit better in my room. I had two choices, build my own bedframe or go
to Montepuez, buy one, and pay to have someone bring it to Namuno or just build
my own! I’ve always wanted to learn more about carpentry so I made the only
logical choice – build my own bedframe! Up in the north we call them Makua beds
because the southern parts of Mozambique don’t build them. They’re made from
wood with a reed-rope weaving for the bed part.
I began watching YouTube videos about joint making with wood,
continued to frequent the market for tools, and began buying wood and
reed-rope. My town has some lumber but it’s extremely expensive: a 2x4 can sell
for 150-200 Meticals. Comparatively, a log of about the same size or smaller
costs 30 Meticals. Step 1: debark the
wood. It’s hot and tiring but oddly fun to debark wood with a machete. Step 2:
Measure, Measure, Measure once more and then make cuts with my handsaw. Step 3:
Sand down the legs and attempt to make them more level. Cuts with a handsaw and
without any workbench or table make it more difficult to have level cuts –
especially when you’re a beginner carpenter. Step 4: Measure and begin the
Mortise and Tenon joints. These joints are some of the strongest but each one
would take me 60 to 90 minutes to build the Mortise and another hour to build
the tenon – there were 8 of these joints in total. By this time, I had about 8
blisters on my right hand. Most had broken and half of those either had blood
blisters or another blister forming underneath. On day 7 of construction, I
begin the reed-rope weave. I’m about 75% done with the weave when I realize one
of the tenons has strong signs of degradation. It was a joint I rushed and only
spent 30 minutes fitting the tenon to its mortise hole. Frustrated and tired of
sleeping on the floor I began the process of thinking about potential
solutions. I tried to fix the joint and continued the weave. Shortly
thereafter, the entire joint broke.
I did the one thing sports has trained me to do – I took a
deep sigh, went outside, and began debarking another tree to replace my broken
piece. I bought a few hourly data packets and played my YouTube pump up
playlist I usually listen to while working out. In my rage, my machete slips
and cuts threw the glove I was using. Hilariously, I cut my left thumb (I’m
fine now) right above where I cut my thumb growing up! I have a large scar on
the inside of my left thumb from some carpentry I attempted to do in Middle School.
I was using a chisel and it slipped – the result being my scar. I could only
help but laugh at my hand full of blood. Damn, sometimes I’m straight stupid.
Well, I did the only logical thing – took a shot of jack, cleaned my gash,
taped it up and finished debarking (fortunately I had my machete sharpened the
day before so it was perfectly sharp so the cut was clean and easy to deal
with. Unfortunately, my machete was sharp and cut a little too well). On day 9
I finally completed my bed. See the pics below! Materials used: logs about 2.5
inches in diameter and rope made from reed. Tools used: Machete, handsaw,
pencil, ruler, 24 mm chisel, 18 mm chisel, and sandpaper.
My hope is to build another similar type bed to work as a
couch for our living room. One of my joints is again showing some stress, but
it should last at least a month or two. It just means I still have some work
ahead of me! I also have a list of about 9 or 10 other things I would love to
build for our house. School starts on January 20th so I have a bit
of time until work begins. I’m also hoping to ask our carpenters if I could
rent a power saw for an hour – that would definitely make things a bit easier!
Until January 20th, I will continue to make my
house my home. It is important to have a place of security and comfort. I am
beyond excited to have unpacked my bags and put up my photos from home. I will
also continue to practice my Portuguese and continue to learn a bit of Makua –
vaccani vaccani.
~Daniel
“If your plan is for one year plant rice. If your plan is
for ten years plant trees. If your plan is for one hundred years educate
children” – Confucius
P.S. Sometimes you need to plant rice, mango trees, and
teach in the same year. In order to plan for hundred years you must live past
the next year.
P.P.S. Some logistical information about mail! My new
address is:
Daniel Bladow
P.O. Box 95
Pemba, Cabo Delgado
3200
Mozambique
Make sure you write “air mail” or “para aviao“ on any piece of mail.
Also, if you’re sending a package here are some tips: when you list the items
inside and the value of those items, please understate the value. The higher
the value, the more I must pay to receive the package. As far as packaging, the
most effective methods I have heard about are: use a cardboard box of some kind
(think shoe box or any other box), put the box in a trash bag, and then wrap it
with brown packaging paper. This tends to prevent spills when it tears and
prevents people from stealing. Lastly, if you address the package as Padre
Daniel or something like Para Cristo then it is less likely that people attempt
to open the package and steal things.
