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Things have been fairly quiet recently, hence the reason for me not writing. The most interesting things get recorded in my diary though, so I have still been able to put together an account of what we have been up to! Aren’t you lucky?

Wednesday 28th January was Tessa’s birthday, and there was a “surprise” celebration down at Quinta, the combination farm, restaurant, bed and breakfast and campsite. I say surprise, but who else was she expecting to see: her mum and dad? It was a pleasant evening although it rained really hard, but what do you expect from Africa in the middle of the rainy season? The rain did little to dampen spirits and the good food was consumed with gusto! The thunder and lightening was particularly impressive that night too, the whole sky being lit up in purple with each bolt.

The following weekend we were kept busy (and fed in repayment!) by Deb and Jim, who we helped to move into their new house. Saturday afternoon was spent clambering around on the roof disconnecting the solar system they had installed and moving the panels, batteries and wires to the new house. We helped some more on Sunday too, and although the wiring up of the batteries and lights was beyond Deb and I, Tim’s A-Level physics came in very handy and the job was a success. Unfortunately (or fortunately) they have only had to use the battery for a total of about five hours, as they have had a pretty good supply since moving. A new transformer in town and since then electricity has been remarkably improved I’m pleased to say, although it still goes of a couple of nights a week.

The week beginning 9th February was a bit different for us, in that Aida, our empregada (maid), was ill, and we had to fend for ourselves for the week. It turned out that we were able to survive quite happily on our own and the house didn’t fall apart. Because of how the teaching timetable works out Tim ended up doing most of the cooking, but I spent mornings tidying and sweeping and keeping the place in order. I would have done the washing too but Mendez, our helpful guard, wouldn’t let me, and insisted on doing it himself. Very generous of him, but I did try!

That week I also received the letter I wrote to myself back in July on training, on my 18th birthday as it happened. The letter reminded me how nervous I was back then of coming away, and how terrified I was at the thought of teaching my first lessons! We were able to chuckle quietly at some of the naivety of our less experienced selves and be reminded of our preconceptions and expectations.

At the end of that week (13th February) was the leaving party for Nadia, a French nurse who was working with MSF in Lichinga. She has been in Lichinga since well before we arrived and I have really enjoyed her company during my time here, so it was a great shame to see her go. It was a brilliant evening, with the whole party dancing in the very small dining room at one point. I also heard a story that night from American Rebecca, who very nearly became the co-ordinator of a $22 million development project in a small district in Mozambique (Districto do Lago), when some American money needed to be spent in a hurry. She managed to persuade a visitor from American Aid that $22 million dollars was not what the area needed though!

Although we didn’t get in until two that morning after saying goodbye to Nadia we were up again at five in order to jump on a chapa bound for the Lake. We decided that as we hadn’t got round to going again since we first went back in August it was about time we made the effort to go again. So after a few hours on a rather cramped chapa we were back at the beautiful Chuwanga beach. This time we stayed the night though, and set up our borrowed tent on the beach. We spent the afternoon on the beach, sipping drinks, swimming in both the sun and the rain and quite simply relaxing! We also ran into a load of Portuguese nurses who have recently arrived in Lichinga for a three-month stint in the hospital. Communication was a little slow but in the evening a game of cards helped to break down barriers, and we managed to convey the fact that a lift home from them would mean we could avoid getting up at five to get on another chapa, meaning we could spend the next morning on the beach as well.

Some observations about the Lake that I thought were interesting. You get ‘azungo’ (white man) shouted at you a lot more then you do in Lichinga, mainly by the same small children who then proceed to ask you for your food. Fishermen paddle three or four kilometres out into the lake in canoes dugout of tree trunks. A group of about twenty young men can be seen pulling on a rope, hauling something out of the lake, which turns out to be a huge net of fish. There are a few boats running a chapa business up and down the villages on the Lake. Storms can be experienced to their full effect, with nothing to obscure the lightning coming down to the horizon, and the thunder bouncing back at you from the hills. The Lake is used as a swimming pool, a food and water source, a washing machine, a kitchen sink, a mode of transport and (probably) a toilet. You are sold strange fruit that evening your Sainsbury’s produce department working partner can’t identify. Lake Niassa: quite an interesting place to visit.

While at the Lake we crossed our sixth month point in the year, so it now feels we are on the way home in a sense. The Saturday was also Valentines Day, but I was disappointed not to receive any special letters. I did take the opportunity to sit down and write a letter to a very special person volunteering in Lesotho though, not that it will arrive for three weeks!

A couple of weeks of (relatively) normal life after the trip to the Lake we had to head back to Malawi again, in order to obtain new visas, as our DIREs (residence visas) still haven’t been organised. For the outward leg of the trip we had a lift most of the way with Jackesh, who was going on to Lilongwe (Malawi’s capital) to pick up partner Tessa from her flight from England. The last part of the journey should have taken at the outside two hours, but it took us nearer five. In striving to make the trip as economical as possible they put the minimum amount of fuel in for each stretch of the trip. In doing so they miscalculated and we run out of fuel not once, not twice but three times, and each time someone had to go by foot to get some more. The last time however we were pretty much in the middle of nowhere and it was fast getting dark. The chapa just pulled to the side of the road and gave up. I was feeling pretty sure we weren’t going to make it to Blantyre that night and was just about resigned to spending a night by the side of the road. Eventually though another chapa turned up which we were quickly bundled on to. We negotiated a price to be delivered to the door of Doogles, the backpackers, as Blantyre is a very dangerous place to be after dark.

We spent the weekend doing shopping unavailable to us in Lichinga, even though we forgot our carefully prepared shopping list, and reminiscing about our Christmas holiday in Cape Town with fellow volunteer and Cape Town travel companion, Ellie. We also visited her project again and went swimming with her kids. On Monday we sorted out the visas with minimum hassle, although they told us that this would be the last time we would be granted tourist visas. So that could get interesting in the future. Then on Tuesday we returned to Lichinga, fortunately without any of the problems encountered on the outward trip.

* * *

Well since beginning writing this life has gone a bit haywire. Thursday 4th March I left home to go to work as usual, and everything seemed fine. I returned home at twelve however to find Aida (the aforementioned empregada) in floods of tears, over what she was upset about we couldn’t begin to fathom. We weren’t alone – numerous guards, Fatima (who works at the Nakosso office) and even her mum tried to get some sense out of her but to no avail. This went on for along time, a good hour and a half, and towards then end of it she ended up collapsed on the floor screaming and crying. It was a very surreal and scary experience, as the situation seemed to be so completely out of our control.

We have heard a number of explanations going around as to the cause of the incident. One story suggested that Mendez, the guard on duty at the time, had given her some gin, and that she had reacted badly to it. Another explanation was witchcraft, that some sort of spell or curse had been put on her, which is something taken very seriously in much of Africa, and accusations have been made against the maid working at the other Nakosso house. Aida hasn’t returned to us since, it happened a week ago now.

The following day added to the mayhem that was going on. We had arranged a meeting with Orlando, who is unofficially our first point of contact for the project as our host (the First Lady of Niassa) is still away. Not that we saw anything of her anyway. Once we had covered all the points we wanted to with him he basically told us that the project was in pretty bad shape financially, and that unless more money could be found the project would end after the current courses. The Foundation (the charity run by the First Lady) was originally given $50 000 of Irish money, and this was used to fund three projects: the Learning Centre, Lichinga Limpa (who clean the streets) and Lichinga Festa, a monthly public entertainment event which we have never seen head or tail off. Now that this money has run out there is now capacity for any of the projects to continue. And as the First Lady is still away, after leaving before Christmas, there is no one in a position to look for more money. The official line is that the Foundation is looking for another source of funding and the projects will continue, but the reality, as put to us in this meeting, was that money was not looking likely and therefore there wasn’t a future for the project past the end of April.

So these were things that turned life down here a little upside down. We got to escape at the weekend with a fairly spur of the moment trip to the Lake, with Deb and Jim this time, so we didn’t have to travel by chapa this time. It was a very good weekend, and a great way to relax after the complications that had recently arrived. We played some good games of cards and did a lot of swimming, although the peaceful atmosphere we were seeking was slightly ruined on the Saturday evening by loud music and a group of South Africans and Mozambicans having a good time.

On the Sunday we ventured out from Chuwanga and headed towards Musamba, a small village very much out in the bush. We drove has far as we could but the rainy season made the river just before the village impassable, so we paid 5 000 meticais (about 12 pence) each for a ride across on a dugout canoe. Wandering through the village we were greeted by bom dias and hellos at every turn from the friendly locals, and on the way back, after being told that the teacher we were looking for works in a completely different village, stopped for refreshments a small local enterprise, a Salla de Chá (tea room). Very English. So I was sitting on a plastic oil drum in a mud hut sipping some very nice tea from a plastic tea cup, and we were also presented with a plate of rice, not the first thing I would have thought of to accompany a cup of tea. But we ate it anyway, out of politeness!

The following evening we received an email inviting us to ‘have drinks’ with Howard Parkinson, the British High Commissioner in Mozambique, who was visiting Niassa, our province. His tight schedule only allowed him an hour or two with us, but it was an interesting discussion: he had originally been the Trade and Investment Manager in Mozambique just after independence in about 1976, so we could hear a bit about how the country had changed since then. He has just come from a post working in Mumbai, India, “a small city of 15 million people”. When he arrived back in Mozambique he was warned of the now busy streets of Maputo, the capital, but they are nothing compared to the streets of India, as both he and I can testify!

I left you last time teaching one computing class and one English class. The Monday after I wrote that though I had two students turn up at 14:00 expecting me to teach them, no one decided to let the teacher know that there was a new course starting. I later received a piece of paper with the names of my four new students on, so it looked like I was starting a new course after all. So I am now teaching two English classes as well as a computing class, the most work I have done since I arrived!

Since then another 20 students have signed up for the course, from the Health Centre in Lichinga. They are fully paid up and so despite the fact that the project doesn’t look like it has much of a future these people are still entitled to their lessons.

The computing course I was teaching finished last week and all students passed, I am pleased to say. It would be fair to say that I struggled a lot with it though; the language barrier makes it very difficult to teach. There is a Mozambican computing teacher at the Centre who can come in and convey things in five minutes that would take me an hour to explain, and even then they still wouldn’t get it. At times it was very frustrating indeed and I almost wanted to give up. I persevered however and although the end results weren’t brilliant I feel I tried my best with them, so to that extent I was pleased. The new course is beginning now and I am feeling a lot more confident about it.

All in all although life by all accounts recently went a little crazy it is by now very much back on track and I am still enjoying myself a lot. Until next time,

Nic

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