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. 

Kids will be kids?

Something that I keep noticing in South Africa is the mentality of mothers and their approach to parenting. It may seem that I’m talking loosely and have no right to judge a parent as I am not one myself, but I am in no way saying this is negative behaviour; merely something that is interesting. I should probably also add that the mothers in question are those of poverty, those I have encountered on the streets and in the townships. These mothers treat their children as though they are much older than their years, and though of course their love for their young is undeniable, the way they interact with them is something that continues to intrigue me. They don’t pay attention when they fuss; they hoist them up on their backs with little tenderness and allow their babies to sit there squashed to their backs for sometimes hours on end.

If anything, I commend these women. In Western society, we indulge children so much, almost too much I feel. Of course it’s perfectly natural and loving to coo over a little one and show it love and affection at all times, but in my (naïve) experience, it seems like these African mothers have developed a more successful method. And the result is that you rarely see their children sulk, whine or cry. I think I can count on one hand the instances that I have seen a black baby crying. They sit like little patient angels on their mum’s backs, happily bobbing along as she sets about her day. They are brought along to work and forced to entertain themselves, sometimes with less than a plastic bottle of a bit of wood. There are few Western mothers who would ‘put their children through this’. Mothers in the UK, although I am in no way faulting their parenting in any way, are on call at all times and cosset their children at every opportunity. I am sure there are exceptions and of course I appreciate that I am speaking somewhat generally. And I’m sure a lot of you are thinking, ‘so what, that shows an attentive parent’. And you’re right.

My experience with young children comes from being an off and on nanny for 6 years. I adore children. I find them interminably fascinating and fun to be around and admire their wonderful ability to ground adults and hold them in the present. Children at a young age don’t have the aptitude to worry about the future, they only live for the day; something I can bet a lot of you wish you had. I sure do anyway. In my opinion, from the mothers I have had the pleasure of working with, those that shone were the ones who didn't let it worry them when they encouraged their child to amuse him or herself. Ultimately, I think these children will grow up to be far more self-sufficient and less insecure, so for the short period of time where it must feel like one is ‘abandoning’ their children, in the long run it is definitely for the best.

African children seem to display a maturity that you don’t see in their counterparts in the UK. They often have the responsibility of a younger sibling once they reach a certain age, a job that they do with dignity and love. They work from an age that some people in the Western world would be stunned at, but again, do this it appears with minimal fuss.  They seem to have been instilled with the right values from a tender age and a knowledge (despite this perhaps not being verbalised) that they must work for their food, their home and their school.  They work to live. You see a fierce pride in their eyes which I find humbling. I think we could all take a leaf out of these African mothers’ books. I’m sure a lot of them wish they could swap lives with a mother from the UK, having the luxury of spoiling and doting over their child, but life sadly hasn’t dealt them those cards. I’m not saying to UK mothers ‘strap your baby to your back and ignore him/her’ but perhaps a little less indulgence wouldn't be such a bad thing? And hey, you may get a little less crying -that wouldn't be such a bad thing would it?!

Nourish: Earth Body & Soul

I just felt like I should write a short entry about the lovely Sarah and the work she is doing at Nourish; the company she founded a year ago.

Nourish is an NPO that helps within rural communities to uplift its people while promoting social responsibility and encouraging environmental education. We were lucky enough to be invited along with her for the day to see what Nourish is all about and it certainly exceeded my expectations I can tell you that for sure. Sarah is only 24 but in my mind she epitomises the perfect person for this job; she has a wonderful attitude, bags of charisma and a wealth of knowledge that is essential for a successful business like Nourish.

We tagged along to a tree planting and educational environmental talk, a wonderful grade R hand knitted dolly donation and to a school uniform distribution in 2 primary schools. The expression on the children’s faces when they were presented with a brand spanking new uniform was magical to watch and it was moving to see just how proud they were. A lot of pictures were taken and a lot of smiles were smiled. It was a truly memorable day and Rog and I feel privileged to have been a part of it.

I wish Sarah all the luck in the world and my fingers are firmly crossed for her that Nourish will continue to flourish.

For more information, please visit the Nourish website and help Sarah in any way you can:

www.nourish.org.za