Hanging On

It doesn't seem too much to ask that an international supermarket would have both bread and dog food, does it?
Welcome to the frustrations of shopping in Maputo. My own little Pajero is literally rattling apart, so I'll only venture into town proper with DB. One morning on a weekend is designated grocery shopping. Requirements are carefully thought through before setting out so that we visit the shop where we are likely to get most of what we want. Which, in Maputo, is pot luck.
Needless to say: dog food and bread did not both feature on the shelves of our supermarket....(much use of expletives!!!)
And my frustration is only bolstered with a sense of guilt, because I know that this is the spoilt attitude of an expat.
Here in Africa, life is hanging on by its claws and teeth, and the inability to purchase dry dog food is the least of most people's worries.
Here, beyond the front of the comfortable, lurks a well of raw need.
Many Mozambicans are very poor and there's little room for niceties when you are poor. A lot of families eak out a living with whatever they can grow or sell.  Cages of chickens, ducks and guineafowl are a common sight along the roads, the birds shifting miserably in the heat of a tropical sun. In tourist season, you'll see puppies too - little bundles of fluff wilting at the entrances to supermarket car parks.
My Western sensibilities are appalled. But I am not living hand to mouth.
If you drive out of town, you will pass little roadside stalls where women sit next to small piles of tomatoes and cucumbers. Some days this is picturesque. On other days it is brutal. It seems impossible that they can make enough to survive on. Even further out, you might see little boys standing guard over bags of grass. It seems there is nothing else to sell.
Actually, emotionally, its been a rough couple of days.
On Thursday, I visited a small local school. It's within walking distance of our own international school and on the same road as a big private hospital and some new condominiums. The school consists of three classrooms, with a fourth being constructed.  Just beyond the classrooms is the `toilet block' - open pit latrines with a reed wall around them. The smell is appalling. The classrooms are not particularly big - maybe 3.5 metres by about 8 metres. Inside each classroom are 3 rows of desks. I didn't count, but probably 8 or 9 desks in a row. In the room with the smallest children, there were four to a desk. A rough calculation makes that approximately 100 little children in one room. There is no electricity. No fans.
Each little child is issued with a nub of a pencil and an exercise book, but the heat is unbearable and the sweat trickles down their little faces. Some were asleep when we visited at 11am.
On Friday, we drove out towards Goba, to visit a rural village.

I don't know the name. The village is very basic, with most people living in straw constructed houses. There is a brick school building, which proudly bears a plaque that it was opened in 1996. It is small and obviously outgrown, with the youngest children having class under a tree. (Much nicer than the classroom I saw on Thursday!) But it is relatively clean and the pupils seem happy. The school caters for children up to Grade 7. Thereafter, if they wish to continue their education, they must find a way of getting to the closest secondary school - 7km away.
The people are stomach-clenchingly poor. They live on what they can farm and this year the rains haven't been good.
They would like a better school. Yes, they would like a clinic (if someone gets ill, they have to be carried to the closest farm where a lift will be begged to the closest hospital, some 20 km away) But their biggest issue is , bizarrely, crime. They talk about children being kidnapped. It is hard to figure out how much of this is urban legend and how much is real. However, it would seem easy to snatch a child when so many have to walk long distances by themselves on lonely roads.
Its confusing. Constantly jangling your emotions, this Africa. The children we met were friendly and eager to show us around. They took us to the water pump and showed us their shop. In a way, their lives seem simplified and idyllic.
Old ladies with babies tied to their backs told us about their village in Shangaan, the children translating into Portuguese for us (translated into English for me!) They smiled and wished us well.
Then, as we were leaving, one of the wrinkly, shrunken women caught me by the hand and asked me for something. She was speaking in shangaan, but she was rubbing her stomach. I knew she was hungry and I had nothing to give.
Claws and teeth, this Africa. If it's not at your stomach, then its at your heart.
On the main drag into Maputo our bus passed a pig, tied and screaming on the edge of the road.
Living in Africa is complicated. Blue skies, open spaces, smiling faces, brutality. Quite probably I am over-thinking it all.
Sometimes I just want to go home.

Swaziland

We headed across the border this weekend - into Swaziland; a neighbouring little kingdom used by many Mozambiquan based expats as a through-route to South Africa. Not us. Our second daughter is currently based in Swaziland, and so we went to see her. She is now 17 and actually didn't want to see that much of her parents, so we decided to make a weekend of it.
Firstly, it must be mentioned that the border posts between Mozambique and Swaziland are about a bizillion times more pleasant that going through Komatiepoort into South Africa. On the way out, we went through Goba. Once you get beyond the outskirts of Matola, Mozambique becomes a different country: rural with rolling vistas; lush in places;empty. And clean, except for the bustle that is Boane. The journey out is filled with uniquely Mozambiquan images: women in headscarves standing on the backs of trucks, little children (we're talking tots aged four, five or six) manfully walking long distances behind their adults, little plastic bags of cashews tied to trees at junctions, piles of wood and bags of charcoal for sale at the edge of the road.
The Goba border post, apparantly bustling until a few years ago, was quiet even on a Friday afternoon and the Swazi side had clean toilets. (not to be scoffed at in this part of the world). The border post as a whole is clean and, other than the odd boredly belligerent soldier, fairly friendly.
We were headed to the Foresters Arms,outside the Swazi capital of Mbabane. The directions said to take Junction 13 and follow the road a `short distance.'
What I hadn't reckoned on was the suddeness of night. If you've not heard it before, this is a fact of African sunsets: once it is set, that's it. It is pitch dark. Not many streetlamps happening outside the cities in Swaziland. 
We drove through Manzini, got to Mbabane, took Junction 13, turned the wrong way, came to a dead end, turned back - all in the dark, with fewer and fewer vehicles around us.
To cut a long story short, DB was not impressed. He kept asking where the place was and I kept on saying it was off Junction 13 and so we drove and drove into the night, headed into the mountains. Eventually, just as we had resolved to turn back to Mbabane, a sign board appeared and after another 7kms, the Foresters Arms was reached. (Phew! DB was at the point of implosion and our littlest had been asking to go home for a fairly long while...)
But what a lovely place. Surrounded by pine forests (very environmentally unfriendly - but that's another story), the Forester's Arms is preserved in a genteel 1950's aspect, with lovely Swazi staff speaking English with English accents. DB was supplied with a chain of Castle lagers and he did chill slightly until they closed the bar at 10pm. Which, while a very 50's thing to do, didn't do much for the man who had just been on the road in the pitch dark...
Any-way, he did warm to the place before we left - nothing like watching the mist roll down the mountain, while sipping  a glass of red, to warm even the heart of the most weary traveller. And the staff were so lovely. Our beautiful waitress, Bongile, was the very essence of graciousness, sweetly putting up with our littlest as THE ONLY child in the establishment. (Not so well received by the dour busload of German tourists who pitched up on Saturday evening and concentrated hard on eating lots of dinner....followed by an equal frowning concentration on the serious matter of breakfast the next morning. They all observed our little child with great suspicion, as though she might be carrying some sort of rare mountain affliction. Of course, the fact that she mostly glared at, and sometimes growled at them, might have contributed...)

I love Swaziland.And while I know it may be a generalisation, the people we encountered were friendly and articulate. Lots of smiles. And English is everywhere! Which is like being able to drink when you've had to filter everything through the murk of a foreign language you can just barely understand. Yes, I'm boring. Yes, I am the essence of the colonist in Africa. I cannot help it - I like to communicate in my own language and it is so wonderful when everyone else seems to speak it.
Aside from that, Swaziland is clean and seems to work.
We decided to use the Namaacha border post to come back - less turns and traffic and you can cut out Siteki, which is a little town full of taxis and people who walk in the road.
On this route you pass through the Lebombo conservancy which, in part, is game reserve. You cross a little cattle grid, at which point a small sign cheerfully announces that pedestrians and cyclists should be aware that this is an unfenced game park and they should be aware of lions and elephants. And yes, we saw a pedestrian...
No lions and elephants, but a couple of impala grazing at the side of the road, completely unperturbed by the passing traffic. Also a vulture restuarant with vultures circling overhead.
The road snakes up into the mountains, with beautiful views out over the valley. An inordinate amount of people seemed to be slogging up those gradients, along with the odd cow and a delightful group of donkeys, including two fuzzy babies.
The border post was silent except for us. Small downer in that the toilet control guy on the Swazi side was seriously miserable, but hey-ho.
Namaacha is lovely. Cool, leafy, filled with crumbling houses, its like a film set. I'm sure not much goes on in Namaacha - but I do like it.
Then down the other side of the mountains, back into Mozambique. There's a portion of road which has been planted as an avenue with huge trees - a strange European bubble between the grassland and scrubby bushes. 
But we really knew we were back in Mozambique when a car with no windows (none: no windscreen, no rear windscreen, no side windows)  and a missing side panel, packed with grinning young men holding the doors closed, turned in front of us just outside Matola.
And if we weren't convinced, there was a wedding video in the making down the Marginal. The camera man was hanging out of the window of his vehicle, filming the happy couple, who, in turn, were hanging out of opposite windows of their wedding vehicle...
Some things only happen in Mozambique.