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On Thursday 18th September we were joined in Lichinga for a couple of days by Adrian Frey, Tamara and João, who work in Maputo and are in charge of Nakosso, the company that oversees the running of the Learning Centre. The way the Nakosso staff were behaving it was as if they thought royalty was arriving! The office got a lick of paint, a new sign went up and everywhere was very clean, tidy and organised.

Tamara sat in on one of my lessons too. Unfortunately that lesson wasn’t a particularly great one and I made a few mistakes. Taught me a lesson though in that it reminded me not to be so complacent with my lesson planning!

They are currently mainly growing tobacco and we saw the fields where this is grown and the huge mud brick barns that the tobacco is grown in. The barns measure about 40 meters by 10 meters and are a couple of stories high, and take a few months to construct, very impressive! He also has tractors with huge steel wheels that he built to reduce the damage to tyres that would have incurred from clearing the land for the farm!

Tuesday 23rd September was Lichinga Day, a public holiday. In the afternoon was the Lichinga 2003 bike race, for which Tim was roped in to driving people around and I was roped in to taking photos. There were about 30 competitors in the race, which was an 8km ride to the airport and back. Competition was high for the first prize of a new bicycle, and the winner looked very pleased when he came in!

In the evening the following day Golden Nights, the local night club, was operating. We thought we should take advantage of the opportunity and go along, considering it only opens about 12 times a year! A very entertaining evening was had dancing badly and singing loudly with both the locals and a few non-locals like us. I must have been having fun as I arrived home at 4:30! I greeted the guard with bon-noite (good evening) but got corrected to bon-dia (good morning)!

Fortunately the following day was another public holiday! 24th September is Revolution Day or Armed Forces Day, commemorating the initiation of Mozambique’s struggle for independence in Chai, Cabo Delgado province. In the afternoon we took one of the Nakosso vehicles to find Lichinga train station. Lichinga only receives one train a week today and the station is clearly not its former self, but the distinctive blue tiling and architecture was worth seeing.

At the weekend we decided to occupy ourselves by getting the coal oven at home going and attempted to bake bread! I spent about an hour sieving the flour through a tea strainer, and we couldn’t find any yeast, but despite this the bread was a minor success. Well, we ate it all, so it couldn’t have been too bad!

This past week has passed fairly uneventfully with teaching everyday keeping us busy and no public holidays to give us days off! Teaching is going well although it can a get a little dull at times, but the odd enjoyable lesson comes along to brighten things up again! I set a test last week and ten out of eleven students passed, so that must be a good sign! My own Portuguese is coming along slowly but surely, which really helps both in and out of the classroom.

Nakosso opened on 27th September 2002, and so on Friday 3rd October there was a little party at the office to celebrate. An unfortunate miscommunication meant that we didn’t join the festivities until a smaller gathering at Augusto’s house at 9:00, but we still took advantage of the very tasty free food on offer! When you’re a volunteer you don’t turn down any hospitality. Which is why we went back the next day to eat the leftovers for lunch!

The next day also happened to be Dia de Paz, (Day of Peace), yet another public holiday! This one seemed pretty big, with white flags up all over town and a small gathering of people in the town’s main square (actually a circle!) dancing and singing. At night there was a big dance event on the basketball court close to our house, and a lot of people in the streets having a good time!

Today we took a short drive to a newly opened Quinta (which translates roughly as ‘a farm with a restaurant’) that Marietta, the owner of Quinta Capricórnio, in Lichinga, recommended to us. It has only been up and running for a little over a week but there was quite a large gathering of people there. There is a small lake and a lot of banana plants, and they are currently building small two story buildings to house paying guests.

That’s all my news for now, stay tuned for the next exciting episode! There is a website up at http://nicinmozambique.tripod.com where you can see some photos that I have taken and will soon contain some information about life here in Mozambique. Thanks to all those who have been keeping in touch, you are going some way to keeping me sane!

Nic

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