The Buttons of My Mind

An early entry today as I won’t have internet access at the house this evening. Today is my last day in DNG (Direcção Nacional de Geologia for those people with short memories) and it is just possible that the website will go live this afternoon. If it does that would be great, but I’m more interested in getting home to be honest! If it’s working then the link above will work. At least I managed to fix the backups, there hasn’t been a server backup for 4 weeks. I spent some time on the problem over the last couple of days and we had a successful backup last night. Huzzah!

Tonight we’re going out for dinner with Lina Magaia and husband, we were going to the Maputo Waterfront as they have live music on a Wednesday, but as we missed Sagres last night we might have a venue change. The food is better at Sagres and the Rock Shandies are the best I’ve tasted.

Tomorrow morning is packing and clearing up then we hand over the car and get a lift to the airport. Flight to Johannesburg leaves around 4pm and then the night flight to Heathrow. Should be back in blightly early Friday morning.

Had a bit of a crap day today, I woke up feeling sick and I’ve generally felt a bit off colour all day. So I was in a bit of a bad mood at work (no surprises there I hear you say!). It didn’t help that this evening we had all got worked up to go to Sagres for the last time (best restaurant in Maputo) and it was closed. We drove around in a daze for about an hour trying to decide where to go and then spent the mealtime fantasising about all the foods we want to eat when we get back to England.

Thunder again this evening, the forecast is for rain for the next couple of days. It was quite hot and oppressive earlier this evening and the mozzies have been out in force for the last couple of evenings.

Here is a brief boring bit about work. Today I demoed what I have been doing to the directors, I was expecting just the director but it turned out to be all the section heads. I made the embarrassing mistake of not recognising the deputy-director and telling him I was waiting for him to turn up before starting! Apart from that it went fine.

This evening we took Lina Magaia out for dinner, as I mentioned before she is a very famous person in Mozambique so it was going out with a celebrity. The waiters all knew who she was and fussed about a bit, but not too bad. Afterwards she took us to Museu which is a typical African area of bars, each a one room affair crowded around very narrow dark alleys, lean tos etc. There is absolutely NO way you would even consider heading down these alleys after dark without a host. We bumped into Lina’s husband and some of his friends and had a drink. I was driving so stayed off the alcohol, that didn’t stop anyone else who proceeded to get very drunk. Some singing of African songs ensued and we had the various definitions of toilet defined to us by a drunken Mozambiquan. A great way of seeing true Africa that no tourist would ever get to see. We were privileged to have been welcomed into this place, and made very welcome at that. We are probably doing it again Wednesday!!

It’s the Final Countdown, ta da da da, da da da da da etc. This is the final working trip of this project so we are finishing with the house, car etc. Sold the car this morning, we get to keep it until Thursday though, and emptied the house of junk. Then to the beach bar for lunch followed by some last few gift purchases and grocery shopping. Then we blobbed and went for dinner at the fairground where there are numerous bars and restaurants surrounding a very small amusement park. We had a go on the dodgems, but the ferris wheel looked dead dodgy so we gave it a miss.

Completely fed up of restaurant eating now, I calculated tonight was the 38th consecutive restaurant meal. I don’t want to see another kebab, chips and salad as long as I live! We’ve worked out the last few days where we are eating! Oh and I got stopped by the police on the way home tonight, another freebie though.

After work Friday we drove the 220km to Xai-Xai – the provincial capital of Gaza province, the next province north of Maputo. We headed down to the beach resort and found chalets at the camping ground for rent. A very reasonable 850MTn (£17) for a chalet, room and bathroom. Basic but comfortable. There is very little else there apart from ruins of previous hotels and accommodation. It looks like the resort was a busy place before the war. There were a few people camping but we basically had the place to ourselves. We had several 2Ms at the beach bar with more staff than guests. We then sat at looked at the amazing night sky, with virtually no lights the sky was ablaze. Beautiful. The Magellenic clouds the best I’ve ever seen hanging over the dark ocean.

This morning we rose to look at the ocean, there is a ‘reef’ just off the shore and the power of the waves was immense. Definitely not for swimming in, it was just awesome standing and watching. We were the only people on the beach as far as the eye could see in either direction. Pure solitude with just the crashing ocean for company. Amazing.

We drove back to Xai-Xai to explore but we needn’t have bothered as there is absolutely nothing there to distract the casual visitor. We saw the Limpopo river, we drove across the Limpopo River. It did have a prison that looked like a toy castle which was quite amusing. The town was very badly hit by the floods in 2000 and was under 3m of water and the road to Maputo was washed away but apart from the new causeway across the valley there is no other visible reminders. So we drove back to Maputo. There is an amazing straight section of road soon after Xai-Xai that is dead straight for at least 20km and it stretches off into the distance into mirages.

A good trip, if tiring. Xai-Xai was a disappointing town to visit, the beach would be perfect for a getaway though.

So I enter my final week in Mozambique. It has gone so fast but it feels like I’ve been here ages. Bilene seems like months ago, not just a few weeks. Quite a bit to fit in the final few days, we’re still going to try for Xai Xai this weekend but probably come back Saturday evening to give us Sunday to do some things around the house that need doing.

And we have a domain at last! The University have done their bit and the nameservers are set up, need to go to the GovNet people tomorrow to get FTP access and a folder setup, hopefully a MySQL database as well. It’s a bit last minute, but if I can get this done before I leave then I’ll be able to access the space from the UK as well.

Weather has been really pleasant since the rainy day, warm and sunny and the air is very clear and not humid at all. Getting a great sequence of photos of Mercury and Jupiter approaching conjunction, sadly I will miss the climax as they are closest together after I leave and they will be too low from the UK to see well.

Been having a few technical problems over the last couple of days. I’m sure the whole of Mozambique’s internet traffic goes down one ADSL line! Anyway, finally bought the .mz domain, it isn’t active yet but hopefully it will be ready for when I have to demonstrate what I’ve been doing to the Director of DNG on Monday.

Yesterday was by far the worst day weather wise since I’ve been here. It was cold, wet and windy all day. Temperature was mid-teens, thoroughly miserable. Today was much nicer and not too hot.

Looking forward to finishing now and seeing the family, I’m still really enjoying it and we might go for a weekend trip to Xai Xai. I’m fantasising about ice cold fresh milk and decent breakfast cereal, I’m really struggling with the UHT muck and South African Kellogg’s cereal which is not a patch on the UK versions.

Got stopped by the police again this evening, but this time it didn’t cost me anything, they were very pleased to see I had an International driving licence. He gave me a lovely salute and wished me a pleasant sleep, all this while carrying an assault rifle!

Yesterday we went to the Natural History Museum. Bless. They’re really trying their best but the exhibits are very old. They have a lot of stuffed animals that look like they were shot when Victoria was on the throne and some are well past their sell by date. The rotting birds in their sad unlit display cabinets were the worst. The backgrounds were quite recent and they had a disintigrating seagull stuck on a stick ‘flying’ around an ocean scene. Quite depressing. They have also had an attempt to ‘preserve’ some of the exhibits by painting them in grey emulsion, the elephants, crocodiles, dolphin, swordfish and more had been given a few coats (plus runs).

Don’t get me started on the elephant foetus display 🙁

That was jolly wasn’t it! Today I’m on my own, my one remaining colleague has gone north for a few days to seek out more geological records in another dusty regional office of the geological survey. So I sat like a saddo eating my dinner on my own. There must be something about single white guys in restaurants which means they want a ‘good time’, I don’t thank you very much, I just want to eat my dinner!

Then I watched all 3 hours of King Kong, not a bad film, spoiled by being so totally OTT and unbelievable and with some of the worst continuity errors I have ever spotted in a film. I don’t really look out for them but when they are so glaringly obvious you can’t help but see them. Overall, not too shabby and it didn’t seem that long.

Pretty relaxed Sunday after yesterday’s excesses. Finished off gift shopping by buying some T-shirts at one of the street vendors. We nearly bought a full size Mozambique flag, a proper one with ropes and everything, but it was over £30. The guy I mentioned earlier hadn’t quite finished my other gift, he’s made the frame and will finish it by tomorrow, I’m really excited by this as it is very unusual and I’m having it especially made. It’s for my mother-in-law and she’s gonna love it I think!

After this we sat and had some lunch on the beach (during which my fridge magnet seller shadow walked past which was funny, as we recognised each other, I bought a magnet off of him today and we had a chuckle!) and then basically blobbed at home for the afternoon. On the way to dinner we sat and watched the Harvest Moon rise over the sea which was beautiful, but slightly disturbing as we were surrounded by courting couples testing the suspension of their 4x4s under the trees!!

“What no blog last night” I hear you cry dear reader. Well, we got invited to a party by Lina Magaia’s husband in the next street held by some friends of his and my colleagues. And I may have got the teensiest bit the worse for wear!

So let’s start at the beginning. Yesterday morning we went to the Saturday market on Praca 25 Junho to buy gifts. I’ve got some great things but I won’t add spoilers here, I’ve got to go and pick one up this morning as he didn’t have what I wanted and he’s going to make me one ready for today! Prices are so cheap its ridiculous, I feel bad haggling for the odd 20MTn (about 40p)! And I did have a shadow for most of the time, a guy trying desperately to sell me some fridge magnets!!

So we got home for a bit of lunch and then went around to the party about 3pm which was already in full swing, food, wine, beer, music. And Lina’s husband was virtually comatose already! It was held by a French Canadian and his Madagascan wife, so we had a rare old mixture of Portugeuse, French and English being spoken. The party was in celebration of the host’s birthday. We met a really nice Portugeuse family who had moved back to Mozambique and I got speaking to a local French teacher who wanted to practice her English! Quite surreal, but I had had quite a few 2Ms by then! More music, more dancing, more beer until the fridge ran dry. Singing, dancing etc.

People started drifting away about 8.30pm so it was a stagger back to the house for a few more 2Ms and then around to the local restaurant for pizza and 2Ms.

So dear reader, you can see why I didn’t get around to writing a blog entry last night!

Never again