me and peanut ladies

me and my half braided hair and my new beads dancing with peanut ladies.

peanuts!

today we hung out at the pemba dolphin allllll day. just sat under a thatched umbrella, drank some water, went swimming with nelson's daughter, played frisbee, took lots of pictures of passersby...a perfect sunday. it was hilarious to see a mozambiquan teaching chinese tourists to throw my frisbee. there's a stage nearby that had live music and dancing, including the women with the painted faces. i took their picture too.
we're taking tons of pictures. lizia decides there's not enough pictures of me and uses my new telefoto lens to zoom in on the huge zit on my chin.
so nelson's daughter isa has been tugging on my hair all day. beautiful hair! she screams. i only understand half what she is saying. we're playing in the water and once again, she's petting my hair and muttering sweet portuguese nothings. we dry off and she wants to go for a walk. perfect, i've been wanting to as well. but she drags me away from the beach across the street to marco's house, a guy from the course. marco isn't home and the guard won't let us in. isa puts on this adorable sad face and says pleeeeease, just for a moment. he lets her in and i have an awkward 5 minutes with the guard, barefoot, in my bathing suit. she comes out two seconds later and she takes me back to our chairs, no detour. so much for a walk on the beach! she pulls out the comb she just stole from marco's house. for the next hour and a half i am her live barbie doll. she is coming, braiding, unbraiding and pretty much pulling out all my hair. before i left my boyfriend asked me if i was going to get my hair braided in africa. i said no way, i'm not going to be like one of those lame tourists in the caribbean who come back with cornrows that look worse day after day. well, now i just look like a really messed up caribbean tourist with half my head in these teeny tiny braids i can't undo without ripping out all my hair.
so while i was sitting there helpless against this adorable little girl attaching my head, tons of people were coming by, selling stuff- chocolates, lollipops, wontons, chicken skewers, earrings.
dmitri the frisbee guy who calls himself "a business man" has been asking all week to show me his jewelry. i buy some beads that are these cool oval seeds and a pair of cool wooden earrings. his buddy shows up to watch the transaction in awe, where i give dmitri $4 worth of mozambiquan money. dmitri is now loaded, showing off to his friends. i wave goodbye when the friend asks me about my earrings. plata (silver)? yes, they are simple, silver hoops i buy wholesale for less than a dollar back home.
can we trade earrings???
he has these white round studs with a rubber backing.
sure, why not.
so we trade. he puts on my hoops and he's psyched.
i have these cool white carved spikes with balls on the end that feel way too heavy to be plastic, way to warm to be shell. uh, they just might be ivory. yolande thinks so. sortof cool, i guess. i can't really wear them because the stems are super thick.
i am now mostly earringless except for the one extra hoop in my right ear (i've been meaning to even out my piercings). the dude who i taught trick frisbee throws says i look weird with one earring. so strange. you should take off the last earring and give it to me!
he's probably right.
i should have brought more earrings!
so there's lots of ladies around wear typical colorful dresses, have a baby strapped to their backs and heads wrapped in colorful fabric selling peanuts out of these cool round baskets. i suddenly had a hankerin' for some roasted peanuts and so i ask to buy some. she rolls it up in a newspaper cone, or what looks like pages from a book (i heard they have been using textbooks, since they're given out for free every year).
she says 'mil' and i don't understand...that's 1,000...$40?! no. mil actually means one meticai. so wait...that's...4 cents? so these ladies are selling peanuts for...peanuts! i've actually never seen one meticai, the lowest denomination i know of is a 20 bill and the lowest i have in my wallet is a 50 (i took 3,000 out of the bank machine today and it was all in 50s. i'm carrying a WAD). ummm. it would be really annoying for me to ask for change. i'm considering buying her whole batch of peanuts, plus the basket. that's a lot of peanuts! alice doesn't like peanuts. oh well, i send her on her way. i tell alice how peanuts are more expensive where i come from. i wonder how on earth they can make any money selling peanuts so darn cheap. turns out they're really easy to grow, really easy to harvest and roast and sell.
later on we went to check out the stage where the music was coming from and listened to a singer. i danced with some peanut ladies. they let me taste some of their peanuts, yum. salty, perfectly roasted, so fresh. i want to grow peanuts in my balcony garden!

dobrada debaucle

so after work one night a few of the guys ask me if i want to go to dinner and watch the soccer game. sure. we drive off a ways towards the airport for a place that supposedly has some good authentic food. we get there and it's totally empty. rito starts to say that in mozambique an empty place is not a good place to eat. same is true where i live too. so i wonder why are we stopping then? i make the rationale that someone has to be the first person somewhere or else everywhere would be empty. so we sit down. rito asks if frenchie wants some wine. ok. they serve a freezing cold bottle of vin d'oc....with two tall glasses of ice, and a bottle of coca cola. oh no he didn't. oh yes he will. so goes my first calimocho, or, i forget the portuguese word. rito orders for everyone, something "really typical."
i had told him "i like everything! i'll eat whatever" even tho my inner voice was screaming, are you crazy? so we get served these two bowls of vegetable stew with bread. not so bad. until the smell hits me. like the andouillette my brother ordered in paris, one thousand times worse. oh wait, that's not broccoli..."it's a cow stomach, but the rreally the cow stomach." then there was gesturing, rubbing of the belly. it's definitely NOT broccoli. for a second i wondered if it was testicle or something since they kept talking about male cows. it was soooooodisgusting. i tried eating while holding my nose, mixing with bread, adding vinegar. nothing worked. i ate three pieces until i thought i was going to puke and politely said i wasn't hungry. no one else ever showed up to the restaurant, this place was dunzo. later on we watched the soccer game at a fancy place on the beach. i had grilled squid with french fries and enough whiskey to kill anything that may have been in my intestines. deeelish. the game was in portuguese, it sounded like an auction. bubadadgushebedafguturdmfa Manchester vivshabudpshedptdur....there's a dude on the blue team called Drogba, and i saying "trogdor! dribble-ating the soccer ball." but how do you explain trogdor?
there was a commercial for Uganda telecom. there was your typical grandma calling granddaughter and smiling, girlfriend calling boyfriend and smiling...and then a policeman guy with a sideways beret banging his head against his desk. in comes a fax...it's a picture of a rapper dude with gold chains, and it says Wanted: Smack J. For: Crimes. and the policeman calls his buddy in the bush who goes and captures Smack J, puts him in cuffs with a thumbs up. uganda telecom. excellent.

pemba dolphin

so this is the pemba dolphin where i eat pretty much every meal. it's a good mix of locals and foreigners. the food is tasty, but not very plentiful. there's grilled squid, prawns, chicken, sandwiches, all super cheap. there's one specialty i have to order, it's the sirloin steak on a hot rock. this guy was eating it yesterday and 20 minutes after it was served it was still sizzling. the service is....relaxed. it can sometimes take 20 minutes just to get a menu. there are some nice wooden chairs with ottomans under thatched umbrellas in a little front yard area cordoned off by rope, which you can watch the beach from. only white people sit in these though. the locals sit at the picnic tables. there's a security guard who swings a billy club around like he's a police officer in a benny hill episode. whenever i show up he walks right up to the rope and stares right at me. i'll be all, hello, how are you? he doesn't answer, he just stares. it's a little awkward when he stands directly between me and the beach, facing me, back to the exciting beach frisbee games, kids running around, fishermen, brightly dressed ladies carrying stuff on their heads. it's like when i watch a movie and my cat sits on the coffee table and watches me. i want to ask, hey, mind moving a little to the left so i can see the waves please? one would think if there was ever a threat, a robber or some sort, he would come from the beach side. the guard will never see this coming. he would get plopped on the head by a coconut, game over.

dobrada debaucle

the one day i don't bring my camera to lunch, a really really short fisherman shows up with a giant sailfish on his head. no joke, the thing must have weighed 180 pounds and it sagged over his shoulders down to his waist. he was trying to sell it. it looked like an umbrella over his head.
so after work one night a few of the guys ask me if i want to go to dinner and watch the soccer game. sure. we drive off a ways towards the airport for a place that supposedly has some good authentic food. we get there and it's totally empty. rito starts to say that in mozambique an empty place is not a good place to eat. same is true where i live too. so i wonder why are we stopping then? i make the rationale that someone has to be the first person somewhere or else everywhere would be empty. so we sit down. rito asks if frenchie wants some wine. ok. they serve a freezing cold bottle of vin d'oc....with two tall glasses of ice, and a bottle of coca cola. oh no he didn't. oh yes he will. so goes my first calimocho, or, i forget the portuguese word. rito orders for everyone, something "really typical." i had told him "i like everything! i'll eat whatever" even tho my inner voice was screaming, are you crazy? so we get served these two bowls of vegetable stew with bread. not so bad. until the smell hits me. like the andouillette my brother ordered in paris, one thousand times worse. oh wait, that's not broccoli..."it's a cow stomach, but the rreally the cow stomach." then there was gesturing, rubbing of the belly. it's definitely NOT broccoli. for a second i wondered if it was testicle or something since they kept talking about male cows. it was soooooodisgusting. i tried eating while holding my nose, mixing with bread, adding vinegar. nothing worked. i ate three pieces until i thought i was going to puke and politely said i wasn't hungry. no one else ever showed up to the restaurant, this place was dunzo.
later on we watched the soccer game at a fancy place on the beach. i had grilled squid with french fries and enough whiskey to kill anything that may have been in my intestines. deeelish.
the game was in portuguese, it sounded like an auction. bubadadgushebedafguturdmfa Manchester vivshabudpshedptdur....there's a dude on the blue team called Drogba, and i saying "trogdor! dribble-ating the soccer ball." but how do you explain trogdor?
there was a commercial for Uganda telecom. there was your typical grandma calling granddaughter and smiling, girlfriend calling boyfriend and smiling...and then a policeman guy with a sideways beret banging his head against his desk. in comes a fax...it's a picture of a rapper dude with gold chains, and it says Wanted: Smack J. For: Crimes. and the policeman calls his buddy in the bush who goes and captures Smack J, puts him in cuffs with a thumbs up. uganda telecom. excellent.

sunday part II. the disco

so after the dive i met up with the rest of the crew who just flew in from maputo. we're having lunch, chit chatting, i'm getting introduced to all the people i've been emailing the past year. the beach starts filling up with people.
the past few days i had started to think that this town is rather boring and dead, but here comes sunday! thousands of people are now walking, swimming, hanging out. my frisbee is flying up from the crowd. the guy i gave the frisbee too, dmitri, he's like frisbee guy now. he's perfected the throw the disc really hard at an angle so it comes right back to you thing. he throws solo, and he catches it between his legs and stuff. rad.
no one i'm sitting with seems to care or notice the gargantuan beach party forming. i'm itching to go out and take some pictures, walk around, whatever. they want to have a debriefing about the course. so i go back to my hotel room across the street to get some printouts and get caught in this huge parade. there are horses, motorbikes, the indigenous people with painted faces, police cars, trucks with dudes playing the drums in the back. it's insane, i have to frogger across this 2 lane mess to get to the hotel and i get caught up in this mob. i'm fighting my way through, getting grabbed into dancing circles, people waving in my face, they're like, can't you see this is a party? where are you going? and what is this white girl doing here?
i finally make it back to the lunch spot and no one seems to have noticed i've been gone for 30 minutes. i tell them there's a friggin parade and they're all oh, right, pemba is about to win an award for what i understood in their portuguese was third deepest bay in the world. i'm thinking, that's odd, who cares about being the third deepest bay in the world? so i'm asking everyone about the depth, like, 70 meters isn't that deep. i'm sure there's somewhere in russia that's way deeper. and all during the meeting i'm trying to figure it out, and everyone is all why are you so obsessed with the depth of pemba bay?
finally we end our meeting and we go check out this big stage with live music and it's a celebration that unseco has announced that pemba is the third most LARGEST bay in the world, within a category of most beautiful bays in the world. oooooh, now i get it, that makes sense. people are very psyched about this. this is a most incredible party. but you know, i went to bahia honda, in the florida keys, the supposed 2nd most beautiful beach in the world and it wasn't all that. but hey, i'm not going to bust anyone's bubble here.
so me and a bunch of my collegas decide to walk over to another beach bar and grab a seat. i vote for the small chairs close to the action. they are rocking chairs. rocking chairs in the sand? they prove to be a terrible idea. i rock forwards onto my face and sergio falls sideways like he's a drunk. so we decide to get some beer. hey, it's sunday 4pm. there's a party on the beach! pemba is the third largest bay in the world!
so we order these huge beers (2m, the company owned by the president, or, "doshem") and heckle the passers by, take pictures of kids, decide we should visit the first and second largest bays in the world, wherever they are and determine if it's true. this guy comes over to sell this delicate wooden scupture of a pelican with long wings that balances on a stand. we are amazed by the leverage action on the thing. i buy one for my dad, to add to his collection of cool balancing toys on his kitchen counter. i'm like, dude, do you have a phD in physics or something? and he answers sadly no, lowering his eyes, i only recently got my masters in engineering. boy do i feel like a jerk.
we finish our beer and decide to have a change of environment. this one guy says he knows a restaurant just down the beach, which is also a discoteque sometimes. it's 5pm on a sunday, we figure it's probably pretty chill, so we go.
it turns out to be like that saturday night live skit with the guys who dance like robots to techno. saturday night at the roxbury? there's bone vibrating tribal techno blasting and the place is packed with all the girls that i've noticed are missing from the beach party. the DJ is up in a booth wearing an "i'm hot" t shirt. the dance floor is jammed with every age class between 6 and 55 and their halter tops barely qualify as clothing. an 8 year old boy asks me to dance and proceeds to grind on my leg. this is akward. and it's 5:30 pm on a sunday. we get some more beer and hang out by the blacklight. next thing i know i'm dancing in this circle with a breakdancer in the middle. it feels like the last time i was at the queen night club in paris, like when people were doing coke everywhere and there were guys dancing in cages and bubbles and fake snow kind of thing. this old lady in a unitard comes over and grabs my waist and tries to lift me up like we're figure skating.
i remind thomas, the one with the weird straw hat that we have dinner plans with the rest of the folks in an hour and a half. he ignores me and dances with a far less than 16 year old. i'm getting my picture taken left and right and thinking, this is going to haunt me some day. then i'm asking myself when was the last time i went clubbing before dinnner? yeah! i go to the bathroom. 3rd largest bay? it has the world's most disgusting bathroom! and they call this a restaurant? the doors are falling off the hinges, the toilets are all broken, leaving yellowish brown bowls that don't quite line up with the drain, so there's leaking stink everywhere. i go out onto the beach area and there's another dance floor, exclusively for kids. my light up frisbee would be so rad here. so is my sunday in pemba.

sunday part I. the dive

so i've been spending most of my time outside work with alice. she's a tall, confident, funny marine biology phD student from maputo. she has lots of funny stories and we get along great. in the meantime, she won't let me out of her sight. seriously, if i want to go across the street for coffee or something it's wait for me, i'll come with! i think she's terrified i'll get strangled or something and the course won't go on. the thing is, this place is really safe. the security guards are mostly barefoot, and don't carry guns, only billy clubs. and most of the time they are on their backs, feet up against a wall, staring at the sky, and likely asleep. they have perfected the plastic chair nap. if more went on in this town, they would have something to stay awake for.
anyway, at the beach, alice is like my mom. she sits by my clothes while i play with the kids and swim. she makes sure i'm always walking on the sidewalks. she also makes sure i get my projects done so this trip is feeling a lot less like a vacation and a lot more like work. so i'm pretty certain she wanted a break, which is why she sent me diving sunday morning.
the day was totally crappy and windy, the worst for diving. but i went anyway. i thought it would be good for me to be underwater with my thoughts, relax. we get in this teeny tiny boat and motor over the waves and i'm instantly soaked. and i'm the only idiot who brought a towel, which is now as wet as my hair.
i always sortof freak out during the first part of a dive, because it's like, oh my god! i'm breathing underwater this is SO weird! and it takes a moment to adjust. well the entire group sank to the bottom like a bunch of lead weights. so i'm drifting there, all by myself, trying to adjust my fins, get situated and the guide comes up and is all are you ok? are you ok? with the little diving signs...yes, i'm fine...i'm coming and i'm delaying the whole group so they're like, who's the amateur? so i go down real fast, which i hate to do, and i get a little dizzy and i can't see much and my eyes are focusing on all the crap right in front of my nose, the crap that's getting stirred up by the wind and i'm all what if these are actually little stingy bugs like they had in panama? what if they get in my underpants? what if my regulator leaks? can anyone see that i'm farting? is my heart beating too fast? what do bubbles in your brain feel like? and so on and so forth.
so much for being alone with my thoughts. i'm pretty sure i'm not getting enough air, and so i'm breathing fast, but you don't want to be the loser that runs out of air first, because then the whole group has to surface and everyone is all thanks for ruining my $50 honeymoon dive, jerk.
so i'm trying to calm down, breathe slooooow and then i'm looking at my hands to see if they're pale or whatever and then i'm wondering why we have 10 fingers and toes and not a multiple of 4, which seems more natural and then my dive buddy is all are you ok? are you ok? and he won't leave me alone and then i see this big fish and i'm all YUSSSSS like my friend meg says, and then i wonder how my softball team is doing, or if my cat will be alive when i come home and then i'm wondering if my cat could ever understand that i'm underwater, thinking about her, and then i figure i haven't really looked at anything and i see another big fish and say YUSSSSSS and then i realize how ridiculous it is that i'm saying YUSSSSS off the coast of africa 90 feet underwater and then i realize that i'm 90 feet underwater, holy crap, that's deep. you can't see the surface! how do i know which way is up?
diving is [retty fun, right? i go over and swim near the weird german couple who is taking pictures of each other. they're weird because i noticed up in the boat that the guy shaves his entire body, head, chest, arms, legs, swimmer style, but the girl doesn't shave anything.so, either she's attracted to hairless guys, or he's attracted to hairy girls, or both. which is it?
then it's time to go. 54 minutes just flew by. there was lots of soft coral, whatever. it wasn't really relaxing.

thirsty lizard

so they've separated the guys and the girls into two hotels really far away from eachother. "that's how it must be in africa." they keep inviting me to their hotel for dinner...and breakfast..all organic! fresh eggs and milk! ha. slo i say, why don't we all eat somewhere in town? but too late, they decided to have a fish-n-beer thing and i'm not invited. oh well.
so i went to my little dolphin cafe and drank a beer and sat and read my book. the local beer is called dois m, or 2 m, or "doishem." for some reason when i order, they always bring two. then comes a little lizard...are you thirsty little lizard? why i think you are.

got rooster?

i woke up real early today and went for a nice walk on the beach. a peaceful stroll in my barefeet, watching the women fish from the sand bar...and then comes this guy, trying to sell me a necklace. they're always trying to sell me something, either melted chocolate, seashells. so i'm all dude, how about YOU buy MY necklace?
ok
$150 dollars. this is real quartz.
uh, how about $5.
no, now shoo!
so i'm walking back to my hotel and here comes a dude with brown oranges.
no, i'm ok with brown oranges, seriously, thank you!!
then he says "gallina?"
and i'm thinking, gallina means rooster in spanish. and he whips out two live roosters.
nah, i'm good on roosters, thanks.

professora aurelgrooves

i am definitely not cut out for this teaching thing. especially with africans.
so this training is in the universidad catolica de mozambique. a concrete breezy no windows open hallway affair on the beach. i spied a computer lab with 20 commodore 64s. we are shown to a classroom which they rent out like a conference room at a hotel. but there is no screen or dry erase board or anything, just one of those shiny chalkboards that's impossible to write on (with the chalk i find on the floor), a few windows with heavy wool curtains, some chairs that have the backs at a 90 degree angle to the seat, a spartan ceiling fan that might fall on my head, and one plug for our 22 computers, projector etc...we manage to get off to a start 2 hours late. we're doing introductions, why are you here sort of thing when custodial guys come in and starts setting up coffee, clanging pots, dropping coolers. i count 5 people on their cell phones, others are talking to each other, clamoring for the password to the wireless internet. so i make up some rules. no cell phones! it was like i had just announced the winner of the zimbabwe election. total chaos. no email! what?! crazy teacher!
my humor of punishment (punicao) and detention and cleaning the blackboard if you violate the rules is lost on them. i wish i had a ruler or something to smack their heads when i catch them sleeping. some guy from the ministry of environment comes in with his desktop computer. he's setting up his monitor, his keyboard, his whole home office when he raises his hand "may we start earlier tomorrow? like at 7? you know, so we can end at 3?" i remind the dude he appeared 15 minutes before lunch on his first day.
i managed to sweat through all my clothes all day and thankfully not have to use the bathroom, which was on par with the discoteque. this class is a nightmare. we're 3 lectures in when one guy admits he missed the part about the right click mouse button. they don't want to right click, they do whatever they can no to right click. they want to learn about satellite imagery, but they don't know the difference between a text file and a spreadsheet. "double click the file to open it." 20 hands go up. these are the same 20 people who cannot create a new folder, but can check 3 email accounts, write text messages, gmail chat and talk to their neighbor, all the while saying they are giving me their full attention.
they keep deleting stuff. one thing i do a lot is go into the recycle bin and pull the software program out. maybe they are telling me something?
then we had a long lecture about data organization. putting your data in one directory so you can find it. always save it there, end of story. so the most common question i get asked is "where did i save my file?" i don't know.
my favorite are the guys from the geography institute. they do not understand a single word of english. they raised their hand and i went over and they had the GIS program running in 54 different windows. they must have clicked 108 times on the icon. they deny everything. one guy said, i wasn't here this morning. yes you were, you asked me if i have a boyfriend. they do not know what coordinates are. they ask me what's wrong with our map? well, let's see, the coordinates of your point are 490 degrees South and 5068 degrees west. so what country is this in? that is no country, there are only 90 degrees of latitude my friends.
but this is just how it is, another world. tomorrow they want to start at 8. so everyone is all, ok, let's have breakfast at 7:30 at the hotel then! but it took us 30 minutes to drive there today....that's how it is.
but day 2 was actually way better...i tried to have a little more fun. once they started seeing cool elevation maps and hillshades, they were hooked. i had them make maps and send them in emails to their friends. we mapped data we called "rito's lady friend's house." it was almost 5 the course was over 30 minutes ago but they wouldn't leave. so where's my apple?

frisbee fiesta

i brought my frisbee out to the beach today with a plan to teach these soccer obsessed kids another sport. i'm like "friiiiiiizzzzbeeeee" and they're like, duh, we know, throw the thing already. so i toss it to this 9 year old and he catches it between the legs and whips a side-arm throw to his buddy, who flicks it like a pro to his cousin who dive-backflip catches it in the water. i have nothing to teach these kids. they picked up the hammer throw in two seconds and can catch anything i toss. they can curve it, spin it on their fingers. then they bring out all their frisbees and it's a friggin' frisbee party. 20 kids, 8 frisbees. though theirs are all tupperware plates or those free discs you get free from the bank that suck. i gave them mine. ok, maybe i'll show them what a zone defense is or something. this is my olympic team in the making.

my name is...

so there's a construction site behind my room. i have no idea what they are building, but they carry metal rods and throw them a lot, and argue, and there's a skeleton of a huge satellite dish next to a broken more intact satellite dish. there are some skinny dogs who scratch themselves against anything sturdy and a lady who fills bins with water and yells at the kids running around. i think one of them is named aurelia, because almost every time i'm sleeping, i hear aurelia! aurelia! venga! with whistling, and i wake up to get up and go, and when i realize i don't have anywhere to go i feel like i've been had. when i'm getting ready to meet alice i hear my name coming from the walls and so i hurry up and don't have time to put bug spray on and run out the door, but it's just that ghostly voice again and i get eaten alive by the bugs.
they call me aurelia here because somehow, aurelie is impossible. my name is aurelie. what? huh? crinkle the brow and squint. so i say aurrrrrelia and they're all, oh! that's so easy! a nice portuguese name!

italian food in moz

alice took me to a fancy italian restaurant on the beach....3 times. it has a 34 page menu. every combination of pasta and sauce and pizza or calzone. all homemade. i order the local pumpkin-like thing ravioli. don't have it. ok, meat then? all we have is fish ravioli. ummmmmmm. the gnochi? no gnochi today. i'll take the asparagus pizza then. no asparagus. we go through pretty much the whole menu when finally, i say, how about you just replace the asparagus on the pizza with mushrooms? or, you can add mushrooms to the regular pizza, it's the same thing (cheaper).
at this point the waiter's head explodes. he has no idea how to handle this. so i get a calzone. it's huge. it's awesome. there are loud italians drinking peroni behind us. the waves are crashing on the beach. yummy.

stinky room

so i never saw maputo, only at night, but i figure i was staying in some sort of foofy neighborhood that looked like rio. but pemba is cute. beach town, more mud-huttey than i expected, and a lot of american tourists. they drive on the left here, which makes me wonder, at what border do they decide to switch sides (in congo you drive on the right)? i'm on the beach in this little residence called 'wimbi sun' next to a brightly lit casino, and this tasty restaurant called the dolphin hut. at first, i was worried when i saw "dolphin steak" and "dolphin burger" on the menu, but they are just referring to their name, duh. kids roll in the sand while you eat lunch under a thatch hut. beer is cheaper than juice or fanta. my room is really big, has air conditioning, a whole bunch of harsh fluorescent lighting and hot, running water! there's a plastic patio chair and a matching table. my bed is actually two twin beds sideways. my bedside lamps plug into empty holes in the wall that pretend to be outlets. my phone is a decorative phone. it has buttons, a receiver, but no cords connecting anything. when you walk into the front door you think, oh, there's no one at the front desk, but no, the young muslim dude is usually on the floor praying while watching american tv. superbad was on yesterday. today, notting hill.the maid guy comes and wipes the floor with a rag under his barefeet and walks backwards to the door to make sure to leave no footprints. now that's service.



so i read in the lonely planet guide that you don't flush toilet paper down the toilet. you put it in the trashcan that's usually next to the toilet. so, that's why all these these bathrooms are so gosh darn stinky! same goes for my hotel room. only my hotel room doesn't have a trashcan, it's just a bucket. a lime green plastic bucket with a butterfly on it, fluttering happily next to a little smiley asian girl holding flowers. there's a chinese price tag on it and underneath the picture it says "best wishes! i feel dreams, i am hapiness, i am fairty [sic]" um, this bucket does not smell at all like what it describes. it takes very little to attract flies here. why did i ask the management to only come clean my room every 3 days? i go to the bathroom a lot. enough said.

day 2 status

day 2 status.number of mosquito bites: 11intestinal function: at 90% but dropping quicklystate of my forehead: currently has a bump and bruise from walking into a street sign (i still haven't slept much. it went gooonnnnggggonggggongg like in a cartoon) finger wound from the bathroom door in the plane, just like when i was 9 on the way to japan: kinda puss-ey.

here we go...onto pemba

it's impossible to know what time it is. i've reset my watch every time i see a clock, or when they announce the local time when my plane lands and it seems i'm always drifting within a half hour of reality. and i know it's not my watch, cuz it's a swatch with a brand new battery, so there. on the BBC news, there's a big mozambique logo in the lower right corner where the time would be. i don't think anyone has the correct time, obviously because i'm early to EVERYTHING. so basically, i can stay 25 minutes late and make it feel like everyone is on my schedule, or try to keep up with the atomic clock and always be let down. i think i'm just not going to wear a watch anymore.
i awoke at the ungodly hour of 5 am to catch my flight to pemba from maputo. i had asked for a breakfast wake up call of juice, coffee and a danish, but all i got was juice because they didn't have anything else. and it made my stomach turn. i waited in line at the airport with all these germans and idiots from ohio with hunting rifles (safari jerks) who think they don't need to wait in lines and barge ahead. i finally got to the counter a good hour and a half later to have the lady say, "sorry, you have to wait until 7am to check in.

"but my flight is at 7:30. (and things aren't exactly "speedy" here)

you have to wait until 7.

but it's 6:58.

you have to wait until 7.

so we stared at each other, she looked at the ceiling, i tapped the counter, looked at my watch, wondered if it was in fact the right time, she looked at her cuticles and then finally asked to see my passport, precisely 1 minute later.
security is a breeze. the two guards are watching a movie on a cell phone, laughing. this young woman is going up to every white person and asking their name...the fourth one, a hippe french chick with dreds nods no...and finally she comes to me...hello? it's alice, my new colleague.
i get on the plane and look at my boarding pass..awesome, this flight is only 1h and 30 minutes. i guess i say this out loud because the stewardess laughs. she calls me "crazy lady!" we make THREEEEEE stops! and shows me a map of mozambique and connects 4 dots in a backwards z. i point to the line connecting maputo and pemba in one smooth arc and she goes "haha." awesome indeed. i think, 3 take offs, 3 landings, i'm now tripling my chances of being in a firey plane crash.

professor stinky breath sits next to me and for the second time on this trip i'm having my personal space invaded by my row mate. the armrest is a divider, people! on my 16 hour flight to johannesburg it was fatty mcfatso, a 380 pound UMD student who wore a size 3XL sweathsirt and a few of those x's simply absorbed the armrest and invaded my seat with his thigh and belly. so gross.

so people just loooooooooove obama here. he's like a personal hero from maputo or something. i try to tell the professor that i'm already quite sick of the whole hillary and obama debaucle but no, i get to hear how great obama is for the next hour, and "si se puede!" hillary is a fascist! (sounds like my mom) i'm hoping the next plane stop will buy me a moment of relief, but i only find out that professor drinks-a-lot plans to get hammered at each stop, guzzling as much beer as possible in the 20 minute southwest style layover. so whenever the plane makes a stop everyone gets off and goes into the transito lounge, which is usually a bar on the second floor of the airport overlooking the runway. the first time i didn't get my transito pass and i had to argue my way back onto the plane. so you stand there in the breeze and watch them refuel, unload cargo. at one stop an ikea bed came down the ramp, along with two coffins. i surmised they were empty by the way two guys swung them sideways onto a pile of luggage. i also saw my bags get unloaded and was feeling nervous until one guy came running, no no no no! and took them back onto the plane. whew!

so, by the last leg of the trip professor is stinking of beer, mumbling about mississippi, muhammad ali...and obama! did i tell you how much i think obama is great? oh, and he promises to introduce me to the governor of Ibo when we arrive. she's rrrreally small he says! (he does introduce me to her and she's exactly my height).araman picks me up at the airport, shooing away all the wannabe baggage handlers and beggars and brings me straight to the office. i haven't slept in two days.

the office is actually a makeshift loft built above another office. the ceilings are 5 1/2 feet, so that's fine with me. the stairs to go up there are steep and treacherous, especially when you have short legs like mine. it's like the 2 1/2 floor.

they love my maps. they don't exactly fight congo style for them, but close. the warden of quirimbas national park (i love that they call him a warden. as i day dream into shawshank redemption) says there are 6 more people are on the phone, begging to be a part of my training. they are from the ministry of geography, the people who make all the maps. and they don't know how to use GIS?nope. i don't ask any questions, and i decide i can't turn anyone away, especially geographers. but that makes a total of 22 people i have to teach next week. i'm sortof dreading it, but plan on taking full advantage of the slow weekend ahead of me to see the mozambiquan president visit town! there are flags everywhere and the streets are spotless. i want to eat lobster by the beach. and discoteque!!

step 1. jo-burg.

so in the johannesburg airport they have lots of meat jerkey standsand...a muslim toilet? it's got a picture of a mosque and the turkish hole in the ground style poop chute.