Driver's guide

Herewith my Guide to Driving in Maputo:

1. Adjust your speed to fit the amount of potholes in the road
2. If the potholes are severe on your side of the road - drive on the other side. Show your annoyance at any oncoming traffic that expresses surprise and/or anger at your decision.
3. If the potholes are severe on both sides of the road, drive on the edge of the road. Note, you may drive slowly on the edge of the road if there is a child there. Otherwise, regular hooting is required. (Pedestrians have legs, don't they?)
4. Drive as fast as possible between potholes. Swerve wildly as necessary.
5. Chapas (mini-bus taxis) have the right stop dead in front of you to off-load passengers. Any accidents will be your fault as you should have expected this behaviour.
6. A chapa has the right to overtake at speed and then pull in in front of you to load/offload passengers. (Well, they ARE in a hurry).
7. Do not, under any circumstances leave a gap between yourself and the car ahead - you wouldn't want another driver to take advantage
8. When approaching a drive-way or intersection where a car is waiting to turn, remember to speed up
9. If waiting in a drive-way or intersection in a queue, remember to hoot loudly regardless of whether the driver in the front has the opportunity to move or not.
10. Occasionally you might establish your superiority as a driver by speeding down the inside of the turning lane and turning on the  inside of the car at the front of the queue who is waiting to turn
11. When approaching a bend or a narrowing of the road, be sure to speed up - you don't want any oncoming traffic to get there first
12. If there is a large oncoming vehicle which clearly needs extra space to pass, be sure to wedge the nose of your vehicle into the centre of the road. The truck driver should have known better. You may lean out of the window and gesticulate wildly.
13. There is no apparant need to belt your children into the car. Six free range children on the backseat proves your competence as a driver. Even better, have one small child climb between the front and the back while you are driving.
14. Feel free to stop at any point to chastise said children.
15. Above all, drive assertively. Maputo roads have no space for wimps

Snippets

Mozambique is a quirky place, full of odd habits and seeming contradictions. Most of the time it doesn't make a lot of sense. One the one hand, it is a country barreling into the 21st century with one of the fastest growing economies in the world - on the other, it seems steeped in superstition and fear of change.
In a conversation with my empregada about why people on the street are unhappy with aspects of the current government, she said that the closing down of informal street-front shops is a real issue, even though people are offered stalls at formal markets. People are apparantly suspicious of formal markets, because neighbouring sellers might curse your stall, stealing all the business for themselves. Hmmm. Bet Woolworths (the UK one) didn't think of that!
When one of a neighbour's two maids was fired, my empregada explained that the first maid held magic in her mouth and had spoken badly of the second maid. Apparantly, her version of a silver tongue means that the senhora listens only to her.
And there is a bombed out house on the way to Matola which, and I quote verbatim, `a white man bought to restore, but can't, because it is haunted by a witch'.  This was the tale told me by a child, shortly followed up by adult elaboration that it is the house of the witches, where a coven still meets. Apparantly, if you get close enough, you can see the words `house of witches' spray painted onto the walls in Portuguese.

Maputo also has its own take on weddings. Although I'm sure that some church wedding do happen, modern Mozambique is traditionally Marxist, so most people wed at the Magistrates - seemingly on a Saturday. Despite the non-religiousness of the affair, everyone is bedecked in bridal attire with lots of bridesmaids in shiny dresses and lots of men sweltering in dark suits. It seems traditional that they all go down to beach (often loaded into the back of trucks) where the bridal party troop all the way down the decaying pier to get their pictures taken. It is ever so slightly bizarre to watch sometimes three or four separate wedding parties traipsing down the pier, photographer in tow, the bride in her big bright white shiny dress, the shiny bright bridesmaids watching from the road side. I can only conclude that the Maputo wedding album must be a standardised affair, with the pier photo somewhere in pride of place.
Other than these observations (and a surreal encounter with a bridal party shopping in Game, bride and groom in their full attire), I really don't know that much about Maputo nuptials. But DB has been invited to a wedding in a few weeks - so insider knowledge to follow shortly!

escape

I have been a bit silent for a while for some very good reasons:
The first being that the internet stopped working for a good 10 days. This is Maputo - it does that. Then you try to communicate with the internet provider man who speaks only Portuguese. Ho-humm. It all takes a while.
The second is that I escaped to South Africa to see my sister. (Yay!)
Together with my littlest, we travelled down to the Western Cape to spend a week in a small town called Prince Albert. (Yes, its named after Queen Vic's hubbie!)
George is an easy one and a half hour-ish flight from Johannesburg, and Prince Albert is a two hour drive from there.
At George airport, we were issued a Chevrolet Spark (very apt - since there really isn't enough car to cause a fire...) by the trusty car rental company, into which we squished my large bag, my sister's two medium bags, a booster seat (with child) and bags of provisions for our stay. Boot and all seats were very full. It is indeed a wee car, but there is some sort of small advantage in being able to lean over to open the back window on the opposite side of the vehicle (although one cannot easily reach into the boot from the front seat - you have to stretch.)
Aaah. The Western Cape. Up over the Outiniqua mountains, past the flurry of Oudsthoorn and into the remarkable Swartberg through Meiringspoort. I snapped picture after picture, but couldn't quite capture the sheer awesomeness of driving through those mountains, with the red folds of rock dwarfing the road like the battlements of some ancient castle. The road slips between the mountains and they rise up on all sides. closing ranks before and after you. Its a piece of magic.

The road crosses the river over and over, with every crossing place quaintly and aptly named:  Skelm's Drif (translates roughly as Yob's Drift) and Dubbel-draai Drif (Double-turn Drift) being just two. It is stunning and I was just as enchanted going back as I was on the trip through.

Prince Albert. Well, I wouldn't want everyone to flock there and spoil the quiet of it all...
A little town with lots of old karoo houses. The ones with the tin roofs, deep verandas and high ceilings. There's a dairy which makes excellent cheese and yoghurt and you can pick up fresh baked loaves from the hotel. They have a Saturday market and a vineyard just off the main street. You can walk everywhere and when you sit out at night, the milky way is in full display.

The self-catering cottage we were staying at had no telly - and my small child didn't notice. That really says it all. The drive through the Swartberg is like climbing into the wardrobe and emerging in Narnia; so separate does Prince Albert feel from the real world.
We spent much of our time drinking wine (there are several vineyards in the valley just outside town) , eating excellent olives (from the Karoo Virgin olive farm on the edge of the valley) and talking to the locals, many of whom have escaped the big cities to live in this little piece of serenity.
Yes, I wax lyrical.
And it had to end, as most things do.
Back out through the mountains to reality.
As we de-wedged our bags from the Chev Spark at George airport, a bunch of huge blokes in Sharks shirts strolled by - presumably the Sharks rugby team. A minor excitement in an otherwise nightmarish journey back through the looking glass.
Did you know that its okay in South Africa to get on an aeroplane with no shoes? Yup. I was somewhat gobsmacked (in my best colonial manner) to watch 2  boys gad about the airport with no shoes and then trip across the tarmac and into the plane. I didn't know you could do that....
A small cretin called Declan (by his endlessly whining mum) kicked my chair all the way back to Jo'burg, where the smog was waiting to greet us. Then it took the small child and I an hour to clear customs for our 45 minute flight back to Maputo, where the delightful representatives of belligerent officialdom stared us down for another hour (well, me - the small child got fed up with the situation and took herself off for a walk and then engaged in a fight with some child off the TAP flight. All very amusing at 10 at night.)
Yup, Toto, we aren't in Narnia any more. (Sigh...)

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.

Maputo weekend

The Marginal is what it says on the label: the last margin between city and sea. And it pulses like an artery.
Turning out of our complex gate into the fast flow of the Marginal is a mission. Mozambiquan drivers are driven by the urge to get somewhere NOW and not by chivalry. Drivers will actually speed up if they think you might creep into a gap. Most exits out of our complex to the right on a weekend are accomplished by DB. I would rather turn left with the flow of traffic and brave the dirt road (which is currently something of a shifting desert with piles of loose sand) before I cross the manic stream of weekend drivers.
But DB is made of sterner stuff and works on the principle that the average Maputo driver doesn't really want to drive into you, even if his aggression would suggest otherwise. So off we go, down the Marginal on a weekend. As I said: it pulses. To the left are the clothing traders. Bright capulanas, improbable trousers, ruched sundresses blow from lines strung between two poles. Maid's uniforms, complete with frilly aprons hang from trees on home made hangers (a stick on a string). Fishermen, silver and red fish bunched on a line, scan the cars, looking for tourists who will buy at better prices than the market.
And the micro-shebeens (women with cooler boxes full of beer) line both sides of the street. On a Friday and Saturday night, the cars pull up on the pavement at the beach edge and a full-on street party ensues. Patrons of the local nightclub, Coconuts are often seen wandering down the Marginal in search of a road-side beer at 9 on a Sunday morning.
Oh yes, in Maputo, the people love to party!
Which is why going out on a weekend can be a rowdy affair. Yesterday we had a late lunch at Mira Mar, an establishment right on the beach. To say that it was heaving is a bit of an understatement, but we found ourselves a table on the sand. Only to discover that we were flanked by two birthday parties, each louder than the other. Singing `happy birthday' in Mozambique is a joyous and extended affair, followed by lots of whooping, clapping, drinking and laughter. It is loud.
Which is fine. Unless, of course you wish to have some sort of conversation. But all very atmospheric.
Not so atmospheric was the large-ish young man sitting dead centre of my line of vision. He had made every effort to dress the part: stylish rolled up jeans, vest top, shades. He launched into the `happy birthdays' (parabens!) with much gusto and much gesticulating and much jumping up and down and kissing of the birthday girl. Trouble was, his pants sank lower and lower and with each new outburst of joy, more butt-crack was revealed.
Gives a whole new meaning to `marginal'.

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!