It's hotter than Africa

It's really hot here. REALLY HOT. The humidity and lack of AC doesn't help, either. Never again will I complain in the U.S. when it's hot and seems unavoidable. Even if the AC were broken, in the U.S. I could have access to ice and lots of it. Just the thought of all that ice is making me sweat. Two examples of how hot it is here:

Emily texted me one day and said something like this, "Mal! Today I opened my water filter to add more and found a festering lizard inside. Gross." We have geckos chillin' everywhere in our houses but the thought of it being in her water is pretty disgusting. Thankfully it was in the top part of the water filter where the iodine candles are and she didn't get sick.  Em told me it probably got in there because it probably first crawled into the barrel where her water is stored in her house and as it was being scooped into the water filter...so went the lizard.

I finally turned 22 this week so I'm no longer the only PCV in Moz under the age of 22. Anyway, Emily made me a very impressive cake. It was actually one of the best cakes I've ever had. So the day after my birthday I was in a rush to go to work as usual because I like to get my 20 extra minutes of sleep everyday (I guess some things never change) and I left the cake on top of my table. Emily had stayed the night and had actually put a bowl over it. I got home from work later that day and noticed a looong trail of ants on my kitchen table, and even some on the bowl. I took the bowl off and saw the cake on the plate. There were ants on the plate and maybe only two actually on the cake. But, that didn't stop me. I didn't care. I still cut off a huge piece of goodness in all its chocolate glory. Not to mention, it tasted fresh out the oven because it was so warm from the heat of the room. Anyway I chowed down and didn't see many ants on my slice. After that I got really thirsty and noticed the pressure coming out my water filter was low. So, I opened it to see how much there was. Not much. I noticed a small clump of something floating around. It looked like mold. How did that seep through? I thought. Oh well. I stuck my finger in there to take it out. Got it. Oh but it was not mold! No, it was a cluster of ANTS! I then closely examined the march of ants on the table and noticed they were going to the water filter. And that, my friends, is a brief description of how hot it is here. Ants passed up an easily accessible vanilla cake with chocolate frosting which consisted of more sugar than the recipe called for in order to invade my water filter.

Again today, I opened my water filter to see how much water I had and noticed another small cluster of ants in there!