Eeesh!

`Eeesh!' is an expression of astonishment particular to South Africa, but widely understood in Mozambique.
This last week, I participated in a beach clean-up of the section of the beach closest to our house. Twenty of us, armed with gloves and rolls and rolls of black bins bags descended on the beach and began to clean. I expected muck, but the sheer scale of the job was gob-smacking. In one section of around 2 x 5 metres, almost 100 plastic bottles were collected! Many of those were water bottles, but many, many little plastic gin bottles too. Eeesh!
Don't get me wrong - leave the cities and Mozambiquan beaches are gorgeous, BUT the range of rubbish on a Maputo beach is just phenomenal. Lots of the above-mentioned plastic bottles, lots of the little black plastic bags that the little plastic bottles of gin come in, lots of styrofoam bits that apparantly come off the fishing boats (I believe that syrofoam is used to aid bouyancy) and then lots of the eeugh! items too. Into this last category fall nappies, sanitary products and condom wrappers. Yuck - eesh!
But we also picked up an astonishing range of clothes. The local beaches are used for Zionist gatherings, and people quite often strip off before a baptism or a cleansing. There is also a lot of recreational swimming that goes on - and it would seem that some people simply forget where they put their clothes. We found skirts, belts, underwear, a pair of jeans and numerous half-pairs of shoes. And no, they weren't left by people swimming at the time - all items were covered in sand and had to be partly excavated. Eeesh!
We did two hours of beach clean-up, which doesn't sound like much, but is intermindable in 37 degree heat. We swept approximately 177 metres of beach and collected 39 bags of waste.
We felt quite proud. Eeesh!
In leaving the beach, we had to cross the Marginal. We'd barely got to the other side when there was much hooting and a silver people carrier pulled up. We thought we'd attracted the attention of the local press and there was much excitement. Bizarrely, however, a bunch of people wearing Nivea T-shirts leapt out and began scrambling around in boxes. We were all presented with a free sample of Nivea Man deodorant - and then they went away. It was ever-so-slightly surreal.
Only in Mozambique.
Eeesh!