My first few days in Moçambique.

I arrived in Beira last Thursday, and was picked up by Frank and a guy with his arm in a cast, named Rob. We returned to a guest house run by a Zimbabwean woman named Debbie, where I quickly grabbed a shower and then headed out with Frank to have a drink and catch up. We were picked up at our table by the sea 1.5 hrs. later by Debbie and her husband, where we progressed to a photography exhibition by two area wildlife photographers, one of whom specializes largely in photos taken while diving. Free beverages and snacks that went like hot cakes. I was pretty much struggling to have a coherent conversation by that point, though I had a quality nap on the (carpeted) floor at the Johannesburg airport after some delightful curry and after setting my alarm on my cell phone.

Friday morning, I slept in until about 9:30. Frank and I then caught a Chapa (a little white minibus that crams many people and basically functions as the inner city bus transport here in Beira) to the downtown area, and went to the shopping center that mainly consists of a bunch of empty stores and a sandwich shop. (A money laundering venture?) The sandwiches were quite good, and we caught up with Gaia (from Danida), who is a partner of ours here in Mozambique and who is helping us sort out the funding business through the government agencies here and identify partners. We then had a meeting (the three of us plus Candida, a woman from the DPCA) with the head of the Department of Geography at the local Universidade Pedagogica, a public university. We are hoping to collaborate with them, perhaps both in terms of providing an outlet for some student research, and also perhaps in terms of being able to come up with some interviewers for our field staff in September. He was enthusiastic, and we set up a meeting with the Director of the University for Monday (today) to have a formal conversation about it.

After that meeting, Frank and I grabbed a taxi and went and grabbed some things from Debbie’s guest house and made the hour journey to Rio Savane, a little rustic compound of huts with a restaurant on a sandbar/barrier island between the Rio Savane and the Indian Ocean. We chose a hut, set up camp (my hammock found some trees…I think when I am back in July I am bringing a tent, though, as trees are in somewhat shorter supply than in Brazil), and then went to have a drink on the beach. Dinner was great seafood with mediocre French fries.

Sat. morning, we had breakfast and set out for a walk around 9:30. We passed many fisherman and stopped to check out some primitive fishing villages. We checked out some fish that we thought about buying, but passed them by. We walked until we were about tired of walking, and then we hopped in the Indian ocean, for the first time in my life! On the return, we stopped at a very old and presently unused lighthouse, which we could not climb because the ladders were in disrepair. And frankly, even if they had looked remotely sturdy, it still would have been a harrowing climb. We climbed to a hill instead, and surveyed the floodplain. We watched some villagers (unbeknownst to them) take some water from what must have been a well in the sand. As we walked back down the beach, we watched all the fisherman descend upon the beach at approximately the same time in their dugout canoes with homemade square sails, patched together with fabric of various colors. When we returned, it was one-thirty, and we decided we must have walked about 18k! More seafood, and then I read on the beach until a most beautiful sunset. And then, watched the stars for another good while.

There was a serious wind most of the night, and I was awakened when it started to rain, at 7:30. Rather than try and put the rainfly on, we just threw our stuff in the hut and went and drank coffee, and then met and talked about the project for a couple of hours. The bus that was supposed to leave at 9:30 am (that we had turned down) wound up having engine trouble, and not leaving till three. So, we…you guessed it….ate some more seafood, and packed our stuff to leave. On the way back to town, we picked up a very sick woman with her mother. I thought she was in labor, but Frank thought not…either way, she was in very intense pain and had tears streaming down her face.

We returned and grabbed our stuff from Debbie’s guesthouse, and then headed downtown for a hotel switch, some email checking, etc. I had some interesting conversation with a couple of South Africans and a British man living in Mozambique over a salad (first one in days…)…the racism around here is rather “chocante”, as they would say in Brazil. (Shocking? Jarring?). Similarly, the reality has been quite chocante for me here—it is quite a different world from Brazil. The goods for sale on the street are used rather than new…the people are barefoot and eat oranges, not ice cream cones. Car traffic is somewhat sparse, and the buildings are faded and sagging. I feel strange and alien…and grateful to be able to speak the language, albeit with a slightly different accent. The people do have big smiles and shiny white teeth that stand out sharply from their faces, and they have a different way, a different smell. They eat oranges and yams and sell charcoal. The women have infinite ways of intricately tying their hair into colorful pieces of fabric, and there seems to be a small percentage of Muslim women that wear the veil. I saw 5 or so in the back of a pickup as we were walking to a meeting today.

Three meetings today: one with Klaus, a consultant for the Bureau of Statistics, who is trying to get us the most recent population information for the communities that we are interested in sampling, so as to stratify our sample. This, my friends, is extremely exciting. Particularly because our alternative to do this is to count huts from satellite imagery, which we may still try and do to corroborate the INE estimates. Second meeting with ORAM, a government agency that is working in delineating communities and establishing formal community structures. They have worked extensively in the geographic region we will be sampling in, and we need their partnership to make things come off. The woman had a big laugh, and they (in general) seemed positive. Meeting number three was with the Director of the University we had visited on Friday. He, also, was positive, and told us to send a letter of formal contract for partnership. Frank and I will be putting our formal Portuguese to the test, it seems, and finding a rigorous editor.

Our big score for the day was purchasing a cell phone and creating a contact list in a little under an hour and a half, after deliberating the two cell phone operators in Mozambique, stopping by an independent (black market?) cell phone dealer, and crossing the street several times. We wound up buying a phone from the Vodacom guy (who seemed trustworthy) but then buying a chip from the MCell people, because we had been told that MCell had service in the area we would be working in. So now, we are contactable. This is sort of key when trying to create partnerships.

I know this is a little discombobulated and hurried, but we are meeting Rich, a guy from the Gorongosa national park for dinner, and I want a quick shower.

Probably Wed. we will be headed out in the field to do some community visits until the following Friday.

Beijos to all.