Mozambique

I have just got back from a very special 10 days in beautiful Mozambique. From the warmth of its people, to its picturesque backdrops, to its mouth-watering seafood, I’ve come back with plenty of memories.

You may remember me mentioning my wonderful friend Sarah Bergs. She is the founder of Nourish, a charity we have been working with this year and back in March, she mentioned a trip to Mozambique to help her with the orphanage she invests in and I immediately said yes. 

So while I was very excited, the time came for me to endure the helish journey. Rog dropped me off at East London bus station and patiently waited with me as my bus steadily got more and more delayed. I finally got on 3 hours late and bagged what I thought was a very jammy seat. I was wrong. Not only was I next to the most hideous toilet I have ever witnessed, but on my right were screaming children and blinding lights from behind. Great. Safe to say, sleep didn’t come that night, but I bided my time clinging on to my laptop and bag, praying silently that I wouldn’t be mugged (which was seeming increasingly probable what with the dodgy looks and eager glances at my macbook that were coming my way). 

6 hours delayed, I dragged my tired body off to the bus in Pretoria and Sarah’s friend Jenna was there to meet me. We drove 3 hours to Lydenburg where I met her lovely yet eccentric family (think pet bird down the fathers shirt and sisters fighting) before heading to Sarah’s in Sabie. I was so happy to see her; she really is my little soul sister. Little being the operative word; she is 5 foot but has the hugest, warmest personality and smiliest face I have ever seen. Her friend Ria is visiting from England (thank god I have someone to be sarcastic with) and Regina is interning from Germany, so there are a nice group of us.

My alarm shrieked that it was 4am and I reluctantly got up and blasted my face with cold water to prevent myself from slipping into a coma. It was time for me to meet ‘granny’, the car that Sarah has recently bought so that she can transport donations to and from different locations. Granny is a baby blue 30 year old wonder and she is a dream to look at. She is not however a dream to listen to. 4.30am and she wouldn’t start. The poor dear was cold. So it was time for a push start (the first of many it would soon transpire), trying to be as quiet as possible. Not so easy with 5 girls, 5 relatively weak girls at that. No joy. Back to bed for 2 hours while the mechanic took her battery to recharge. Better luck next time.

We finally made it over the border and into Maputo some time that afternoon and headed straight to Fatima’s backpackers where we luckily had our own room. Nothing than worse than sharing a backpackers dorm with smelly foreigners who leave their underwear all over the place and come back at ungodly hours and start to fumble in the bunk below you. No sir. 

A few Laurentinas down (Mozambican beers) and we retired to our beds, mosquito nets so close to our faces that we could have suffocated. Better than malaria again thanks. 

Tofo was next on the agenda, a trip that should have taken 7 hours, but darling granny wasn’t having any of that and defiantly broke down 5 times, including a near catastrophic incident where her tyre popped loudly on the highway and we (I say ‘we’ loosely’) had to change it on the side of the road. Tofo was worth the mission of a journey though-it is pretty much where I imagine most beach postcard scenes are photographed. Miles and miles of white sand and turquoise water, lined perfectly with elegant tall palm trees. Sarah had mentioned the prawns she had eaten in Tofo and no jokes aside, I would do the 10 hour journey again tomorrow for some more of those prawns. I’ve never been the hugest fan of your average prawn as I feel people so often don’t prepare them well enough and overcook them. These however were gigantic; delicately coated in desiccated coconut and fried, served with sweet chili sauce. Good god they were nice.

The next morning we woke up early, grabbed a deck chair, made steaming coffee and watched the sun go up over the ocean, trying as hard as we could not to think of the upcoming journey back to Maputo. The way back was not nearly as back though; granny was exemplary and we were all very proud. We stopped off in an orphanage in Inhambane and gave out balloons and lollypops to celebrate Nelson Mandela Day. What started out as a smily, ecstatic atmosphere soon turned slightly sinister, with some of the boys quite forceably popping the younger girls balloons and generally reeking havoc. Boys will be boys wherever you go it seems. 

That night we had an amazing meal at Costa do Sol on the beach front in Maputo; jugs of sangria and seafood platters. Happy times. Sarah delicately dropped in on the way home that where we were passing through was the exact location that she had been violently mugged at knife point a few months earlier. Thanks Dawn. 

It was time for us to stop jollying around drinking sangria and frolicking on the beach and get down to what we had actually come to Mozambique to do. We drove the small distance to Matola and I found that the others were definitely right when they said granny didn’t start easily and did not like 3rd gear. Aacosida is a lovely orphanage in a safe neighbourhood, run by Dumsane and his wife Clementina. It is home to 15 orphans and vulnerable children but during the day is teeming with other littlies whose parents leave them there for the day while they go to work. 

As always, I was instantly amazed at the resilience of these children. There is clear pain behind their eyes but they slap on a smile and get on with life. I have learnt an awful lot from a group of children a 3rd of my age. The girls as young as 10 years old are in charge of the babies and the general domestic chores. They are up at 6am to get the water heated and the other children sorted, before preparing breakfast for everyone. Joya in particular will always stay with me; her beautiful smile and peaceful nature was heart-warming and she got on with her duties with absolutely no fuss. The day she was able to go to school (1 day in the 3 we were there), her face lit up in a way I hadn’t seen before and it was evident that for a short time she was able to be a normal child. She could laugh and be silly and deservedly forget her responsibilities for a few hours.  

By the time we say goodbye to Aacosida we had proudly left behind a vegetable garden and a nearly built creche, we had made children laugh and play and we had had many unforgettable run ins with granny, most involving a push start. It was time for a little bit of battery rechargement and so we hopped on a ferry (which of course broke down the minute we stepped foot on it) and enjoyed 2 blissful days on Macaneta Island. We swam, drank beer, ate pregos, fended off Bob Marley singing men who were in search of white wives, helped a poor Portugese family from their dog being raped by the local and extremely randy puppy and had a very interesting experience horse riding. Watching Sarah gallop off into the hills with absolutely no control of her gallant horse is something that will always make me laugh. 

I am now back in South Africa reflecting on the wonderful memories made in such a short period of time and so thankful to my soul sister for making it possible. Sarah -you truly are one of those rare people in life and a very special one indeed. Without you, Aacosida wouldn't be the place it is today and you should feel immensely proud of what you continue to achieve.

So until next time Mozambique, thank you for having us. 

'The Spear'

I’m sure some of you have heard of ‘The Spear’ painting, the painting that has become the talk of the town (or I should say, talk of the country) in recent weeks here in South Africa. Brett Murray has just exhibited a new collection of his work, one in particular that has sparked a huge amount of controversy across the country.

In ‘The Spear’ President Jacob Zuma has been depicted partially naked with his, erm, gentleman’s bits, on full show. Of course Murray didn’t actually paint Zuma from life but regardless, it is all people are talking about. Murray has been deemed a ‘racist’ for his work and is believed to have painted Zuma in a negative, derogative and destructive light. In some people’s eyes, Murray is discriminating against black people, perhaps against the Zulus by exposing the president this way. People are claiming that the reason behind the work is the artist’s way of highlighting Zuma as the egotistic, sexually dominant man that he believes him to be.

If you want my opinion, I think it’s all a load of bollocks. I mean come on, do people not have anything better to talk about and worry about? Personally, I think what Murray did was undeniably controversial and perhaps slightly precarious, but in my mind he should not be receiving the treatment that he is. Fine, take the wretched picture down but why bother wasting time, money and effort in court, all over what, at the end of the day is really simply a little artistic license gone wrong?

Who knows what Murray was thinking when he painted the picture; yes maybe he does dislike Zuma (as we know a lot of people do), but hey, the president is not exactly giving people a reason to think otherwise at times. It’s not exactly hot news that the president has been known to visit prostitutes, despite having 8 wives and 20 something children. It’s this the man who said that it was OK that he slept with a HIV positive prostitute because he could simply ‘take a shower’ afterwards to prevent him catching the disease? It’s no secret that the ANC are doing quite a botch job of running a country that could be magnificent. 

Let’s face it, it’s not because Zuma is black and the painter is white. It is not racism. It is a controversial painting from a man who perhaps was undertaking protest art in some form. Why are people allowed verbally express their opinions on Zuma and criticise him in articles but when someone depicts these faults through art, it is suddenly a crime. What is more, if it was the other way around, believe me, there would not be such media coverage of the story; a black man or woman can say whatever the hell they want about white people in this country because the whites have ‘oppressed’ them for so long. I don’t mean to sound negative, but I feel that if  the same level of attention was given to the real problems this country faces (crime, education, poverty springs to mind), then South Africa would be coming along far better than it is.

Despite these negatives, 2 clear positives have come out of this whole debacle. Murray has received a huge amount of publicity which will ultimately boost his career (quite clever if you ask me) and Zuma’s willy looks big. It blatantly isn't that size in real life is it?