The rainy season

The rain was thundering down when I woke at 5.00 this morning and hadn't stopped when I finally managed to get into the office at around 9.00. João and Theresa, who sit at the front desk with a view over Avenida 24 de Julho, inform me that it's been pouring continuously since. This is unusual, even for this time of year; there are usually breaks between the downpours.

The lengthy trip to work was due mostly to searching the avenidas around my apartment building for pools less than ankle-deep. I had naively put on waterproof leather boots, and then had to remove them and empty them out on the chapa, much to the amusement of those sensibly shod in rubber flip-flops and presumably carrying their office shoes in their bags. To add to the entertainment, the traffic lights at Eduardo Mondlane and Karl Marx were out (again), resulting in a Nairobi-standard traffic jam, and two motorcades passed us (when a top official drives through town, surrounded by outriders on siren-blaring motorcycles and carloads of security guards - or maybe secretaries, or even mistresses, as one can't tell through the tinted windows - everyone else has to pull over and stop).

How conditions must be in the dirt-paved bairros, I don't like to think. I was about to write that at least the bairros don't get motorcades, but an occasional motorcade through the poorer parts of town would no doubt be a good thing.

An email is circulating, telling the story of Noa, a fisher living in Vila de Pescadores, just to the north of Maputo. The Lord speaks unto Noa, telling him to build an ark, to load aboard two of each animal, etc. Noa objects: but, Lord, I'll need more than forty days and forty nights to get a permit from the Department of Forestry to cut the wood, and then I need a permit from the Department of Industry to transport the wood from Gaza province to Maputo, and I need permission from the municipalidade to start a construction project, and from the Department of Agriculture to import non-native species... and so on. And the Lord decides to spare humankind another flood, thanks to Mozambican bureaucracy.