Seattle to Mozambique

I’m finally back. Not back in any one place but back to a little sanity after a couple weeks of craziness. As many of you may know, I have had constant hormone imbalances that can be rather unpleasant. They don’t cause mood changes they are just annoying. The only solution it seems is to take birth control pills. The problem is that I go crazy on birth control pills. But I’m here, the climate and the food are different, I decided I would try it once again. Whoops!!!! I just spent my second day without birth control pills (after two weeks) and I feel like my own personality is returning to me. I got cranky (I yelled at a little boy on the plane who was crying because his ears hurt), I got irrational and cried at stupid things, I thought that everyone was out to get me. Yeah it’s a barrel of monkeys!! This time something good actually came of it. I had a nervous breakdown. A serious one. A crying at the office kind of nervous breakdown. As you know I’m usually smiling and very very rarely do I cry. This would be a first for me—crying at work.

Why was this good you ask? Because I rebounded from it in a lovely way. This nervious breakdown had been simmering for a while and when I cracked and came up for air again the birds were singing, the sky was a lovely blue and I decided to get a Bruce Willis notebook (see below) and write down all of the positive and funny things in my life. There are many. These are the things I’m going to share with y’all. This will be many posts so feel free to digest it slowly but it’s all going to be either positive or funny or both. Yeah!!!!

Because of my nervous breakdown (see above—and yes I do know that I’m not supposed to start a sentence with “because”) I have decided to seek out some kind of meditative practice that will help me de-stress and get some positive energy into my life. This will help my work and will REALLY help my relationships. One of the ways is taking a drive. There is a specific drive that I really like-the drive to the airport. There is a long stretch of road to the airport that has two well kept lanes (see post on potholes below) these lanes are bordered by lovely old and thick acacia trees that drip their green branches over the road and provide a lovely pattern of white trunks as you zip by. The backdrop to these trees is kilometers of machambas-sparkling green fields of rice and corn with occasional patches of water lilies that stretch out behind the trees. The sun glints off the water in the fields and women in colorful capalanas bend over their plantings with hoes in their hands. It is a scene out of a movie and a great meditation. The repeating pattern of the trees, the squares of plantings, the swaying hips of women with loads on their heads. Beira is beautiful at these moments—really beautiful!

The other meditative possibility is the mosque in Beira. I know that I’m not religious but I have always been fascinated by religions. I have also always found a little solace in walking into a church, sitting down and just letting myself go through my thoughts, hopes, dreams etc. In Recife there was one specific church in the middle of town that I wouldn’t pass without stopping in to reflect. It was beautiful—the whole place was carved wood from the side panels to the altar! The women’s mosque in Beira is not so beautiful—at least not the temporary one. They are reconstructing the women’s mosque and so right now women pray behind a zinc fence, below a zinc roof, and on carpet laid over sand, beside the emergency exit of the men’s mosque. Still, however, it is beautiful in a bare bones kind of way. The women and their gorgeous scarves make up for the drab surroundings. I had never been to a mosque before coming to Beira and was fascinated—the same way I am about everything that I don’t understand. So I asked my friend to take me. Unfortunately my friend is a man and we couldn’t enter together. So I got all dressed to go to the mosque. I was very worried about my outfit matching which my friend thought was hilarious because the whole purpose was to hear the prayers—not a fashion show. But it’s not very often I get dressed up and I wanted to do it right. So I put on black yoga pants, over this went a little light blue tank dress (thank you Katy Lou!!) and then a dark blue long sleeved shirt. I put my hair back in a low bun and wrapped my head in a mauve scarf and added long, sparkly pink earings. I think I look good in a headscarf—hmmm.

This is the same outfit I wore for the second visit to the mosque, this time in the company of my friend Shelagh (see Bruce Willis Notebook). She was all set too in a lovely brown and maroon ensemble. We walked in and went through the absolution cleaning with little trouble. Two other women, seeing that we were clearly out of our elements, sat down beside each of us in turn so that we could follow what they were doing—washing our hands first and ending with washing our feet. Then we walked over and got in line and sat through the whole service (do you call it a service?). It is actually a very nice chance to sit and meditate. It is much more relaxed than a catholic service, it is much more comfortable to sit on the ground than in a pew, and it is much more interesting to look around and check out all the women’s beautiful scarves. The children are allowed to run around and giggle, the women chat, and the sermon (do you call it a sermon?) drones on in the background. It is a great place to just zone out. I even was able to relax during the more formal prayers where you have to stand up and then kneel down and put your head to the ground. Having already been once to the mosque I was not so paranoid about doing it all right and just got into the rhythm of it. Now I just need to go with a Muslim woman who can tell me what I’m actually doing and what any of this means. For now I just do what I do in Catholic Church, zone out and try to think of all the positive things that I have and that I want in life—the words of the pastor or imam don’t matter so much and given the chatting between women at the mosque, and the general spaced out look of people at catholic mass, I don’t think their words matter much even for believers.

There is a plethora of animal life in Beira and beyond that I just love. I think my favorite would be the geckos. Stuck on the wall and eyeing life with constant twitches, they eat all the mosquitoes and never seem to get feverish malaria. Ah the life of a gecko. I was sitting on the steps of my house the other day and notice the twitch of a gecko tail in a small space below the top of the stair railing. I peered in to look at the gecko and noticed that it was sitting amongst its opalescent eggs. They were big eggs for such a tiny gecko and you could see the dark little spots of life squirming in the eggs. I felt privileged to see these little eggs. They were in such a great spot that let the light shine through them but kept them safe from the birds and other creatures that wanted some protein for breakfast.

My next favorite creatures are these giant crow-like birds that fly around Beira. They are not extremely special but they gave me one crackup of a moment when I was pondering them in a car full of Mozambicans. These birds are black on top, white in the middle, and then black again on the bottom. They look like their in prison uniforms. I sat and looked at them and then it popped into my mind—they’re jailbirds!!!! Hahahah. I was giggling to myself in the car. Everyone looked at me funny and I realized it was one of those language moments that translation just wouldn’t do justice. I just looked back and smiled and left them to think I was just some strange white girl giggling to herself about nothing.

Frogs are also top on the list. The other night is rained really really hard here. Sheets of rain poured down and I woke up from my sleep to run around the house and close all the windows to keep water from washing away all the furniture. This resulted in me getting drenched but the rain usually comes with so much heat that this is actually a pleasure. The next morning I woke up to a lake in front of my house and a noise that sounded like one of those nature alarm clocks on crack. It was frogs-gone-wild. The frogs were so happy, so noisy, so crazy that you almost had to shout to have a conversation over their party. It would have been great to be a frog that morning. It would have been like being in Brazil when they won the world cup or in Boston after a world series win. I bet there were some hung over frogs the next evening.

Winston is the name that my friend Shelagh gave to the Beira dogs. They are fine with having one name, they all look the same. They are invariably tan, wiley and with a snout full of the garbage piled on the corner waiting to be picked up. They are Winston, the top of the evolutionary dog world, those who are scrappy enough to thrive in a big, crazy city. My favorite of the Winston crowd is a Winston named Buddha who lives at the HAI guest house in Beira. Winston Buddha is a dog that once belonged to somebody or other and then was passed onto someone else and ended up being the Chimoio HAI mascot. Winston Buddha is a terror—until you get to know her. She almost bit my hand off a number of times until I resolved myself to completely ignore her. Slowly she got closer and closer and put her little Winston head on my lap. Now, every time I go to Chimoio, she wines and barks with pleasure rather than terror and we spend many minutes making sure her belly is good and rubbed before I set my bags down in the house.

The big giant animals that you think of in Africa are sadly lacking. They are still there, they say, but it is rare to see them. But that is ok by me, I like the little, ubiquitous Winstons of Africa the best.

My best friend in these parts has a car that it is hard for someone like me not to love. It has all the quirks and troubles that I have been accustomed to in my long career of crappy cars. My cars have had doors that don’t open (in one car all the passengers had to get in through the drivers side, in another I had to crawl in through the passenger door and over the stick shift to get in), tricky clutches, strange wires that had to be tweaked just so, and my little Mr. Mustard of a Toyota truck didn’t have a key for the ignition or an e-brake. I had to hot wire the baby and then open my door, place a block of wood and the floor and then roll back onto it for an e-brake. Bruno’s car has lovely quirks like these. The tires are wobbly, the driver-side window doesn’t roll down (try driving in 100 degree Beira weather to know how important that is), the battery cables are loosy goosy and need constant adjustment, the lights are low and wonky…we rattle down the road in blessed cluckyness that makes me feel at home.

The brilliance of Bruno’s car (that I promptly named Chicha) is made even wackier by the presence of no less than one million giant potholes that scatter themselves in crazy patterns along Beira’s roads. One day, bumping along in Bruno’s car, Moises (a data junky) decided we should do a study to see if there were more potholes or paved spots on Beira’s streets. I think the potholes would win hands down. These are not your run-of-the-mill bumpy potholes but instead are often locally referred to as graves. They are big, deep, car eating potholes that have to be avoided at ALL cost. Most of the time you are warned of their presence by a slight reddening of the pavement from the earth that bubbles out of their depths. Sometimes they take you by surprise and you have to do some last-minute swerving to avoid being swallowed up. Chicha is a master at avoiding these holes but alas, her wiggle is made even more pronounced when she swerves. She is like an aged ballerina--graceful, even when the wobbles set in.

Many of HAI’s cars also have various lovely quirks. Most of the older ones don’t have seats that go forward. This is not a problem for me because they all come equipped with first aid kits. I pop those puppies onto the seat and I’m riding in jacked up style. Some don’t have side mirror, others need some serious time before they turn over, and one doesn’t have a gas gauge that works. These cars always seem to fall into my hands—I think it’s fate. The other day I took one of these cars out to the beach of Savanha, a lovely beach down a long potholed earthen road. It is actually an island and you have to get there by crossing a river on a boat (more about that later). On the way back from this St. Patty’s day trip to the beach (more on that later too) we were bumping and thumping along when Shelagh looked back and quickly said in a calm tone---“um you should stop we have no back window”. Yup our window had popped right out and right into the bed of the truck. Luckily the window is a plastic affair and suffered no damage. I was still made to pay for re-gluing the window into its frame though. I actually felt a little resentful about this. It’s like the person that pulls out the one Janga block that makes the whole tower fall. It wasn’t that block, or that drive, that was the problem…that damn window was just hanging on its last Janga block and I got stuck with the trip that pulled it out.

I had a great green St. Patty’s day. There was no green beer or fake leprechaun hats but miles of beach and many a bright green palm tree. I went with Shelagh (who brought her Bruce Willis notebook—and added some great drunkin’ ramblings), my friends Bruno and Diana. We had a lovely day at the beach, swam in the river that forms the other margin of Savanah island and then wandered back to our cabin to start the coals for our meat. And meat we had!!!! Kilos and kilos of meat. Part of the issue was that we were supposed to be joined by two other people who decided at last minute to not spend the night. So we were filled with meat that had to be cooked or wouldn’t have lasted the night. We also had beer (unfortunately not green) and I made a little tomato/onion/garlic topping for our meat. I tried my best but was only able to get through half of my steak. Shelagh, oh Shelagh, in all her wonderfulness was able to finish her steak through and through and topped that off with 10 beers. Bruno tried hard to keep up but was not able to surpass the Irish girl on St. Patty’s day. We danced jigs with Shelagh’s i-pod stuck in our ears, we skinny dipped in the dark ocean (with massive bio-luminescence!!!!!!!—I have to add that to the creatures I love), and made films of the drunken ramblings of Shelagh being “deep”. I had a fantastic St. Patty’s day!!!!!

Mozambique is not Brazil—have I said that already? There is no dancing on every street corner in this city. But there is dancing—you just have to make more of an effort to go out and find it—or make it--for instance, dancing the aforementioned jig. The other day we also went to this cocktail lounge called ABC for Art Bar Café. I loved it. It is a cocktail lounge straight out of New York in the heart of Beira. But it wasn’t for this that I loved it. I loved it for the music. Great, funky music that got my tired butt dancing like the dancing queen I would love to be. The bar was also filled with black and white photos of life in Central Mozambique. My absolute favorite (close your eyes and imagine—oh wait—only close your eyes after you read the description) was taken in a concrete driveway. In the middle of the picture is a basin (I began to say that the basin was bright orange but the photos was black and white--hmmm) with a small dark Mozambican boy naked ready for a bath. The boy is clutching his little white dolly and his face is scrunched up in fear of a cat that is walking by. It was so beautiful this photograph. I think I might go back and see how much it would be.

There is also a giant nightclub called Monte Verde. It is a little outside of town—down that beautiful road that I described earlier. It has a strange mix of music, at times Mozambican, at times Elvis, and sometimes music so cheesy I have never heard it before. The club doesn’t start to get jumping until about 1am so you have to be well rested and ready to loose the next day in sleep. The times that I have gone we have nearly always seen the sun come up before we’ve left. The dance floor is small, the space to sit is large and it is always filled with strange bugs that must be attracted to the pulsing light. I usually sit and chat, jumping up to dance at some songs. My friend Bruno reminds me of a politician—he grooves in and around the whole complex greeting everyone. He knows them all and works the room like a master--makes me jealous. I love to do that!! Perhaps I’ll have enough time here. Perhaps I should be a politician. But the dancing is what is most important. Sliding around, wiggling my hips, letting the stress poor out of my body. Then there is a dance called “passada” that you danced squished up to another warm body and let yourself be pushed and pulled around the floor (that is—if you are a woman). I love this dance. So so nice. Why don’t we have more dances like that in the US????