The big thing of beauty

(I gush? Of course I gush. It's been almost twelve months since I started on this project, and it's been dominating my waking hours since the end of last year. To justify all my time and effort, I have to talk it up.)

Yesterday was two months to the day since that six-hour border crossing with a large, mysterious object. It's taken that long for the Banco de Moçambique to decide it's good enough. That's two months of public statements from BM's governor about the urgency of taking financial services to rural areas - statements typically made when one the big commercial banks opens a new branch in Zimpeto or Benfica (outer bairros of Maputo) and invites the governor along for an approving speech.

Take, for example, Catandica in Manica province, a substantial town - big enough to support two good-sized schools. There are no banks there, so when the teachers are paid each month, they depute one of their number to take all the cash into Chimoio via chapa (public minibus) and bank it there. The risks may be imagined. It's also another trip to Chimoio for anyone who wants to withdraw money. The chapa ride from Catandica to Chimoio takes a good two hours and costs 170 meticais (compare, say, the salary of 2,000 meticais a month earned by my house guard, bearing in mind that Maputo salaries will generally be higher than provincial ones).

Cue fanfare:

I present Mozambique's first ever mobile bank. (That dramatic golden stripe is, of course, no more than an artefact of the camera flash on the door's reflective marker. It doesn't actually glow like that. The Portuguese slogan on the front means "Taking the bank closer to you".)

It will spend every night at Chimoio branch, and every working day will drive out to one of five towns not presently served by a bank - including Catandica. It connects with the internet via GPRS - essentially, via the mobile phone network - and regularly sends to the head office an ordinary email with an ordinary text file attached. The file contains a coded version of all transactions performed in the mobile bank since the last file was created. Here at the head office, we import the file to our main banking databases, and all the account balances, loan contracts, and other financial arcana are updated accordingly. Needless to say, it took a lot of complicated work to create such a simple process.

It's worth noting that this couldn't have been done this time last year. GPRS was not then in place in the rural towns.

When we arrive at the location for the day, the canopy goes up and the tellers open their windows.

These photos were all taken today at our exposição for benefit of media and donors. The elegant blonde in this photo is American Laura, the HR manager and tireless squirer of donors and other notables.

Entertaining and informing donors at a classy Maputo exposição.

Speaking of donors, most of the funding for this project comes from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. I mention this for those who were wondering what happened to all that money they shelled out for MS Vista.

The interior. This photo doesn't give a very good idea of how snug things are, but no doubt I'll get the chance to snap some crowded moments back here during the next fortnight.

Pretending to strut my stuff for the cameras. The laptop batteries had run down by this point, and we didn't want to start the generator for fear of filling our tin shed with fumes and suffocating our donors.

Sr André, the driver from Chimoio branch, arrived in town today. On Friday at the crack of dawn Trudi, André and I will start on the drive north. We expect to spend Friday night in Vilankulo, and we hope to arrive in Chimoio on Saturday night. The branch staff will join in for a few days of "dry runs" - that is, pretending to operate the mobile bank, with a test database and some staff role-playing clients. On Thursday or Friday next week we take it out to Catandica for its first real day of operation.

In other, not completely unrelated, news, yesterday I handed an inch-thick wad of meticais to an Indian gentleman (the Indian community has Maputo travel agencies all sewn up) and received my ticket to Australia in exchange. I'm due to arrive in Adelaide late on 3 July. (Beck, please write!)

The third event of note yesterday was that I was poleaxed. In the classic style, the blow fell from the hand I least expected to strike - that of my unfailingly good-humoured and hard-working assistant Nilza. She and I have been dividing three jobs between us since the departure of Gildo earlier this year. Lately I've been quite proud of having reduced my working week from 60 to 50 hours whilst keeping her overtime minimal.

Now Nilza's husband-to-be has been transferred to Nampula, and she's going with him. We don't have any operations there, so she'll cease working for the bank from 1 August. After that it will be me and whichever likely tyros we can recruit between now and then.

People here are used to me complaining that whenever I start to get my job under control, some emergency strikes, or some new project falls from the bosses in heaven. I take it this poleaxe is punishment for having thus wasted breath moaning about flea-bites. At any rate, I will need some serious rest while in Australia in July.

Another reason to stay at home

From the Only In Africa department comes the news that the runway lights at Nampula airport - Nampula being the third city in the country, the commercial hub of the north - have all been stolen. All of them, by persons unknown and for reasons which will no doubt fuel loud debates in barracas (shebeens) up and down the country, at least until the weekend soccer fixtures.

I don't remember Nampula airport very clearly - I was probably too nervous to pay attention, as it's certainly surrounded by steep-sided granite hills which oblige dizzying take-offs and landings - but it's no doubt one of those lengthy runways built during the post-independence socialist era to accommodate colossal Soviet cargo planes. So there are plenty of lights involved, and presumably a large truck to haul them around, and quite a bit of time and muscle.

Today's issue of Notícias ("Yesterday's news tomorrow") reports that two 737s - the Air Corridor and LAM flights, with a total of 114 passengers between them - landed on Sunday night by the headlights of numerous cars, parked alongside the runway for the occasion. You have to get to the bottom of the second column of the article before you come to the interview with the AC pilot, in which he says (freely translating) "The same thing happened last night, but it didn't matter because the skies were clear. As you can see, there's a lot of low cloud tonight." So one of our two main carriers landed a big bird by moonlight on Saturday (LAM landed discreetly at another airport). "It seemed like the right thing to do at the time," said the pilot. And "Why does this always happen to Air Corridor? Excuse me, but it smells like sabotage."

No word from Notícias on any resulting police enquiries, perhaps because those same police are responsible for patrolling the runway 24 hours a day. Presumably one of them has invested in a discoteca in need of renovation.

Big thing status: no joy. I should emphasise that we are driving to Chimoio.

It's been too long since I posted a photo. Continuing the nocturnal theme, here is a shot of our elegant old railway station (the initials stand for Caminhos de Ferro Moçambique). It now houses a jazz club, though much of the building stands empty. Valentin is behind the camera.

Normal services will be resumed as soon as possible

The longer than usual interval between posts is not owed to taking the Big Thing to Chimoio, alas. It's merely due to failure to notice anything other than bureaucratic incompetence and geekery.

I did get as far as Beira last week, an unscheduled whirlwind trip to resolve a stubborn network outage. Not only did I get the branch back online, but both Beira and Chimoio branches report that their network connections are much faster since I worked my miracle. I'd feel so much better about this if I could explain why.

Big Thing status: approval has been granted and the inspection happened on Wednesday. We now await the letter from the Banco de Molasses giving the result of the inspection. B. de M. explicitly requested that we not do any publicity until it issues the letter, so we can't unveil in the meantime.

If we receive the letter Monday or Tuesday, we unveil on Thursday and head for Chimoio on Friday.