Wednesday 30 October 2013

Rough Day

I wanted to write something upbeat about this mad country, but the mad and the bad are all muddled up. Its been a rough day.
The level of kidnappings and direct threats made to certain prominant families have now led to whole families leaving, with very little notice. Families I know. Not just expats. Patriotic Mozambicans who believe (believed?) in the future of their country. Some of the larger companies are pulling their staff out. People I know are going or planning on going by early December. The murder of the boy in Sofala has taken us into new and scary waters.
My empregada's sister lives up North in Inhambane. Apparantly the trouble up there is getting more frequent as we head towards general elections on November 20th. People are forced to travel in protected convoy between towns. A bus was attacked last week, with a dozen fatalities.
In a terribly written article, the South African `Lowvelder' claims that Mozambique is on the brink of civil war. The Club of Mozambique reports that analysts think that a return to war is `highly unlikely'
I don't know if I should be packaging up the things from my grandmother's house, and sending them home now so that I have them safe if we have to make a run for it.
I don't know if I should be sorting the dog's blood tests and sending him home, because imagining leaving him behind is unbearable.
I don't know if I am exaggerating the possible danger because today so many people left.
There's no way of knowing what will happen next.
Tomorrow people across the country will march, hopefully peacefully, to protest against the lack of action to stop the kidnappings.
We can only sit tight and see. All of us. Us expats wonder if we should go. Many locals wonder what we will do. If we go ,what happens to so many jobs?
It feels like we are all waiting to see what happens next.

Tuesday 29 October 2013

and it gets nastier....

Kidnapping is high on the conversational rungs of everyone I have talked to this week. As a community, we are rattled. There were a total of five abductions in Maputo last week - three women, a businessman and a teenager. Not good.
One of the women taken last week managed to escape. What should be good news is in fact alarming since it is rumoured that she identified a policeman as one of her captors.
Then today the devastating news that a child kidnapped up North was killed. I can't find official notification, but the news on the ground is strong, although the motivation, through the accounts I have heard, is confused. Some say he was killed because his father couldn't pay up. Others say he was killed because they had actually grabbed the wrong child. Yet others say he was killed because he could identify his kidnappers.
Any-way you look at it, the situation has taken a grim turn for the worse. That the child is of a different demographic means nothing. He was killed. He was a child and was taken as a cash cow and disposed of. Awful for his family. Awful for this country.
And we all wonder where this goes next.
We all wonder if we should go.

Tuesday 22 October 2013

Scary stuff

So, normal hilarity and incredulity aside - Maputo can be a scary place. Today, right now, its a scary place.
My school, the place where I work and that my youngest child attends, has just sent out an e-mail to make known that a parent has been kidnapped from a local school - a school which has its campus in the same street as ours. She was abducted as she walked back to her car after dropping off her daughter. We don't know who she is, but if past kidnappings are to go by, she belongs to a wealthy business family.
Kidnappings are becoming all too commonplace in Mozambique. They have been rife in Beira, in the North, for some time. Last year there were several high profile kidnappings in Maputo, most of them centred on the wealthy Asian families. Most of them businessmen. But victims included a grandmother snatched from outside a mosque and a 19 year-old girl.
And in the last few weeks, the kidnappings are back, with a vengeance that defies our cosy idea that they are aimed at a certain demographic. Two weeks ago, a nine year old Mozambiquan boy was snatched after his driver-driven car was rammed on the way to school. He was returned by the end of the week, but it is unclear if a ransom was paid.
In the week following, two other children were taken close to their schools. One apparantly taken off his school bus.
Its scary stuff.
My empregada assures me that the `dangerous' know exactly who they are taking. That they know the families and watch their movements. But that doesn't make me any less worried. At what point does a poor population start thinking that kidnappings are the way to go. When you have very little, the prospect of scoring £10000 can sound like a fortune. At what point do they decide that all expats would cough up more money than a poor Mozambican could dream of? At what point does it become indiscriminate, as it has done in other countries. When do we get really afraid?
And I know that bad things happen anywhere, and I know that my school is doing everything possible to keep us safe. But what would I do if my child is taken? All rationality says it won't happen, but there's a nagging `what if?'
Scary stuff and no idea of how to deal with it.

Saturday 12 October 2013

Summer

Summer has arrived like a succubus. By nine this morning, the plants in the garden hung limp, the water sucked from them by gusts of hot air pretending to be wind. Aaah - Summer. Not for Mozambique the summer of lazy days and languid evenings. Here summer comes in the form of a stew, hot and clinging. It tries to smother you.
Attempts to escape are futile. The summer invades the Mozambican conciousness and the roads are packed. An outing to try to get some photos printed turns into a two-hour-long marathon on roads jammed to standstill. People do stupid things. A little Toyota Vitz slams on breaks in front of our Surf, risking a bullbar through the rear window. The driver drops off her passenger and has a farewell conversation in the street, oblivious to DB's sweating and hooting.
The Marginal crawls, cars dying at random spots, unable to cope with the heat. Incredibly, a bride in her bright white is out at the end of the pier, her dress whipped by the hot wind. I note that her attendents haven't summoned up the energy to join her, but some are knee deep in the sea.
We give up and go home and I turn on the sprinkler for my shrivelled garden.
The heat seems to have driven the insects mad. A cluster of dragonflies hangs around the windows and two large hornets, like fighter pilots dodging the enemy, cling to the underside of the leaves of a shady shrub.
The spinkler brings out the birds, the squabbling house sparrows, some bulbuls and an unusual scarlet chested sunbird which sits on nearby bush and ruffles his feathers before swooping back and forth through the spray.
Bizarrely, a confused largish brown bat flies above my head, over the BBQ and through the verandah. it has to make a second sweep before I realise that it is a bat and not a figment of my imagination.
The small child uses the hosepipe to fill up a plastic bath on the lawn. She adds random plants and plastic fish before tipping herself in. DB brings me a gin and tonic.
Summer wraps around me like a scarf. I add ice to my drink and encourage DB to pick up a beer. The fan fights its pathetic fight and I wonder when the rain will come.
Oh yes. Summer is here. I don't know whether to weep or drink. Drinking seems like the less energetic option.

Sunday 6 October 2013

October Sunday in Maputo

We go for brunch at Cafe Acacia on the hill. Service is slow and the food is just ok, but the location is wonderful. The cafe sits on the hill above Maputo Bay. Tables are arranged on a terrace and we watch huge empty cargo ships navigate the channel into the harbour. The sea is calm and turquoise. Maputo looks idyllic - down to palm trees that line the road on the end of the bay. There is a rustic climbing frame type construction for children and safe paths for our youngest to cycle on. The morning is hot, but there's a breeze on top of the hill. Our waiter is friendly and speaks passable English - which is good since my Portuguese aquisition seems to have halted and DB's never really started.
We drive back home , down from the hilltop towards the sea. There is a sleepiness about Maputo on this last day of a long weekend. Cars meander languidly over junctions after the lights have changed against them. Everyone seems too sleepy to hoot. The weekend beggars are out at the main intersections; limbless men in wheelchairs, old women bent crooked with age and the blind, hands on the shoulders of small boys who spend their time between traffic light changes absently playing with odd bits of junk.
 The tide is impossibly low and it looks like we could walk out for miles. Fishing boats wallow in puddles and cockle pickers are tiny stick figures out on the sand. The sky is a flawless blue and the beginnings of a wind scarcely ruffle the bright white-clad bride and her party who are down the very end of the pier - and still far away from the water. Some of her bridesmaids, shiny in satin purple, stand on the edge of the walkway and wave.
The informal shebeens are out with their cooler boxes of beers and their coca-cola umbrellas. A solitary white tourist, complete with mirrored sunglasses walks between the locals, attracting no attention whatsoever. The Marginal is picking up.
Our youngest talks endlessly, pausing to comment that she is sweating. DB puts the aircon on.
Its a nice time of year in Maputo.

Tuesday 1 October 2013

Lessons

Not a single tampon in the whole store. Not one.
Saying that, I could have bought a newly arrived plastic playhouse for an exorbitant amount of money, but I didn't want one. No - gone to the store for tampons and none in sight. Hmmmm.
Of course, there are other shops in maputo and I am sure that somewhere out there, I would have found what I was looking for. But at 4:30 in the afternoon, with the traffic on the Marginal gearing up to its rush hour hysteria, I really couldn't be bothered.
I now apologise in advance to my solitary male reader : this, as you might have realised, is going to be a bit feminine in tone.
I bemoan the lack of tampons for a very good reason: the reason being that women in the developed world see sanitary products as a basic human right. Out here, factors of supply are actually superceded by factors of poverty. Sanitary products cost money.
Which leads me to my next point: while the politics and poverty of Africa can beat you down, there are people in Africa who simply amaze you.
I am speaking about a South African woman called Sue Barnes. I chanced on an article on her in the South African magazine, Fair Lady.  After her daughter brought home a note asking for donations of sanitary towels, Sue discovered that literally millions of poor schoolgirls aged between 10 and 19 were forced to miss school during their periods, because they are unable to afford sanitary products. Many of them try using all sorts of  home-made solutions, at the risk of infection and acute embarrassment. Many give up and take a week off school every month. It doesn't take a genius to realise that missing that amount of school prevents them from ever reaching their potential.
Sue decided to do something about it.  She decided to design a washable sanitary towel - and she did. Together with knickers that are designed to securely hold the pad.
She packages the knickers and pads in a pack which should last the girls several years (allowing for growth of course!)
And the reason why I tell you this?
Africa is tough. Its no place for people like me who expect to find tampons on the shelf. Its a place for people like Sue Barnes who looks a problem in the eye and gives it a good solid thwack.
I am awed by her gumption.
And Africa is full of such people. They aren't spoilt enough to expect to find it on the shelf, or indulged enough to find it on the internet. They make it up. Fix it. Design it. Make something new.
When I first arrived in Mozambique, my shoes took a hammering. Too much sand and traipsing about  in the dodgy sea water close to our house. Sandals fell apart with regular monotony. I threw them out. My Empregada rescued them, made a plan with a bit of wire or string. Wore them for another few months.
`They're broken!' I would cry.
`No,' she would say, characteristically flattening the `o'. `Shoes are expensive.'
While there's no doubt that living in Europe is far easier than living in Africa, we of the Old World need to rethink our approach. Africa can teach us a lot if we stop to look.