I have now been in Mozambique for 2 months! I have no idea where the time has gone and I can’t believe it is already October. I only have around 10 weeks left and so much more I want to do and see...I am already planning my return trip. I really wish I had time to travel further north. I keep thinking, ‘I’m in Mozambique’, but I’m not really, I’m in Maputo, which according to everyone, is completely different.
I feel at home here now and so when we met other travellers in Tofo who criticised Maputo, I found myself defending the city and was almost a little offended. I think, to be fair, that if you only spent a day or two here, it wouldn’t instantly be your favourite city in the world. It is hectic and dirty and there are parts and places I don’t like but there are also places I love. If I hadn’t got to know some of the people and the places, I would probably have judged it more harshly too.
Even though I feel more at home, some aspects of Mozambican daily life still, and I think always will, seem quite mad to me. At times the Mozambican logic makes no sense at all. It does, however, usually make me laugh and only very occasionally want to scream! I think you could live here for 20 years and still be amazed by the idiosyncrasies on a daily basis. Last week we stopped to buy water at a barraca (small roadside bar) and the woman asked Jan, “Would you like a bottle from the fridge or a bottle from the shelf”. Jan asked for a bottle from the fridge, to be told “We don’t have any bottles in the fridge”. Well I guess we’ll take one from the shelf then. This is normality.
Mum sent me a parcel around 2 weeks ago, something I think we were both a little nervous about as the Mozambican postal system is somewhat lacking. The package (essentials: magazines, Strawbs, Twiglets , chocolate buttons and a Portuguese grammar book!) should have (according to the UK Post Office) arrived days ago. I told Mum I thought this was a tad optimistic. I checked again today and still no package but I have hope. I have also managed to get Oscar’s phone number. I have never met him but he works in the Post Office and let the others know when their post arrived so fingers crossed! I did, however, find out that I will have to pay 130mts (£3.25) simply for the honour of picking up my own package. I wouldn’t mind except the chance of something having been ‘removed’ is high. It’s a case of, ‘open the package, if the contents are worth more than 130mts, take them, if not, charge the recipient 130mts’! One volunteer was sent a jar of Nutella...the jar was opened, half was eaten, the lid was put back on and the package handed over!
Living here has made me realise that I missed out on a lot whilst in South America. I wish I’d spent a bit longer in certain places, rather than always moving around as, although I spent 5 months there, I don’t feel I know any of the countries at all! I had an amazing time but I would like to go back and do it in a less ‘Gringo’ way. Not that there is nothing wrong with being a tourist. Without time it’s hard to be anything else. Don’t worry, I haven’t suddenly become a self righteous volunteer, but I don’t like it when people assume that I am just a tourist, simply as it implies I don’t know any better. “No, I do not want to pay 50mts for this chapa, I take it every day and I pay 5mts, just like everyone else”. I can completely see why it happens but I love it when I get treated like everyone else.
It was Mario’s birthday on Friday so I spent Thursday afternoon making him brownies, whilst Matt made banana bread and Nick made a complicated cake of some sort. We also bought spring rolls and samosas and Nick also made his famous cheesy balls. Almost everything was eaten but when the boys picked up the boxes from the house the next morning, there were a large number of dead cockroaches. Either, we are at the same time, terrible cooks and hardier than cockroaches or, the cockroaches found some leftover Tipo Tinto and it was that which killed them. As most of the party also drank enough Tipo to sink a small ship, the latter explanation is worrying...yet not altogether surprising. It’s good to know though, as at £2 for a litre, it’s cheaper than bug spray! The highlight of the night would have to be the fact that Nick has become “too fat for this world” and simply by standing on it, actually achieved the seemingly impossible and, broke the ground!
On Sunday, I went to Kruger National Park, or as Ele thought, “a cougar farm”, with Nasti, Thinka and Igor. It’s so much closer to Maputo than I thought which is great. Door to gate, including crossing the Mozambican and South African border, took 2 hours. We entered through Crocodile Bridge gate and before we had even paid the entry fee we had seen a warthog and a giraffe! We saw 4 of the Big 5 (rhinos, lions, buffalos, elephants – we didn’t see a leopard) plus giraffes, warthogs, hippos, wildebeest, zebras, hyenas, monkeys, impalas and kudus. I’ve seen elephants and lions fairly close before but I have never seen a rhino up close so it was amazing for me as we saw at least 6 rhinos, including a mother and baby, just meters from the car!
Kruger really is huge; we got there by 7am and left just before 6pm and drove all day and we only covered a tiny amount of the 20,000km. I hadn’t realised either that you could just cruise around on your own. I thought it would be much more controlled. It wasn’t that busy either; there were hours where we wouldn’t see another car. I really could have done with James’s camera as my photos don’t really do it justice. I rather stupidly, although whose memory is at its best at 4.30am, forgot my glasses. By the end I think I had gone partially blind from straining to see and I therefore thought that every tree, clump of grass and rock was an animal of some kind.
I woke up on Monday with tonsils the size of golf balls and swollen glands so I have been at home this week. I think they are getting a little better though so I’ll be back to work tomorrow. I don’t want to work in the Infantario if I am ill as I don’t want to give the children anything.
My host mum has now been away for 3 weeks and I really miss her. The house is not the same without her. Normally when I come home in the day, she is outside on her mat, with her sunglasses with one lens, cooking and at night, she is lying on the sofa, watching her favourite soap, Caras e Bocas. It’s very quiet without her and I miss the food too. Mushanga, who looks after the house, asked me why I hadn’t eaten the 2 week old chicken that had been in the fridge when the electricity went off for 5 days...when I reiterated the above point, he asked, “so you don’t want it?” Come home Vovo!
I feel that I live in a bubble here. I know nothing about what is going on in the rest of the world! So far, the only bit of ‘news’ that I have heard is that Jodie Marsh is becoming a body builder...maybe if that’s the quality of news I’m going to get, I’ll stay in my bubble.
On a completely different note, I haven’t mentioned anything about the pub quiz we had a few weeks ago. The dream team, Nick, Matt, Chris and I, also known as Team TWAT (Together We Always Triumph), came fourth! We had low expectations and despite the fact that the average age of our team was about 20 years younger than the others, we did really well. We won the prize for the best team name and our prize was definitely the best, pitchers filled with Ferreiro Roche. My proudest answers: Carcharodon carcharias is a Great White Shark, Diphalia means that you have 2 penises and the answer to a certain riddle is a sponge. Matt and I are going to ask the Hash if we can organise another charity pub quiz, to raise money for our projects, the Infantario and Ingrid Chawner.
I thought of something from a while back that made me laugh and I forget to mention. When we went to Xipamanine market, one of the small restaurants had a sign outside the loo that said, ‘Menos 2mts, Maior 5mts’ and a man manning the entrance. You therefore had to decide before you went in, and inform the ‘guard’, which it would be. I fail to see what difference to him it made but it made me laugh.
I will put some photos of Kruger up tomorrow. Prizes if you can make out the animals in some of the more distant photos!
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