This post comes to you from the Sunbird Capital Hotel in Lilongwe, Malawi. It's a bit run down, in the approved way of sleepy African city hotels, but clean and comfortable, and the flowers on the dining tables are real. The service may be leisurely but the friendly helpfulness of the staff never fails. I feel much more at home here than in the icily glamorous Intercontinental Citystars in Cairo. (Please relax, PC, I have not forgotten the conference.)
I am here to discuss financial switches and sundry other technical details with colleagues from Malawi, Rwanda, Ghana, the United States and the Philippines. This may sound boring to the uninitiated, until you learn that the dominant local switch was recently thrown into disarray (or, greater disarray than before) when its CEO was arrested for "pornographic acts". Naturally I didn't rest until I got the full story - which turned out to be that he'd been photographed kissing a woman dressed in bra and panties. Malawians are so conservative. When Mozambican bankers run off the rails, they do it in style - exemplified by the central bank official who earlier this year got drunk at one of Maputo's most popular restaurants and expressed his dissatisfaction with the bill by producing a pistol and firing it into the ceiling. (That's the sort of story that's fun to tell foreigners when you want to impress them with the perils of Africa, but the fact is that it's no longer possible to get away with such idiocy in Mozambique. Not only was this top government official arrested, but since his boss discovered that he wasn't at work due to being locked in a police cell awaiting charge, the central bank has no longer required his presence. We await the trail.)
To approach the subject of bad behaviour from a completely different angle, our sister bank here in Malawi is linked with a recent downturn in prostitution. The main cash crop here is tobacco, and tobacco auctions attract hordes of good-time girls looking to separate newly cashed-up farmers from their money before they can get home to their wives. It seems the market has dried up considerably since our sister bank made savings accounts accessible to the rural poor and opened a branch just outside the auction house.
Over breakfast today our American colleague told a story about a pastor he knows whose work has taken him around the world. On one occasion this pastor led a group of American teenagers in a session on the parable of the prodigal son, asking them to read it and then to summarise the story in their own words and to explain what sin had been committed. The statement that "there was a great famine in the land" went right past these teenagers; the sin was that the prodigal son had squandered his inheritance. Later the pastor did the same exercise with teenagers in St Petersburg, Russia, a city which has seen its share of hardship. These young people noticed the famine and reasoned that as a result, the son would lose his inheritance anyway. For them, his sin was that he had abandoned his family. Finally the pastor led a group of teenagers in the same study in Tanzania. They noted that a man was eating worse than his employer's pigs, and for them the greatest sin of the story was that the community had permitted this degradation to happen.
Friday, August 22, 2008
Wednesday, August 06, 2008
A far-off evening
No more than a quick photo essay today. In truth my memories of Luxor and Cairo become harder and harder to summon up, now that a widening gulf of everyday challenges separates me from them. This will be a lesson to me: get the blog posts up quickly after the next holiday, before the central bank can get in edgeways with their unreasonable reporting requests.
The view from my dining table in Midan Hussein, Old Cairo. "Midan" means "square"; the Hussein referred to is the grandson of the Prophet Mohammed, whose relics are preserved in the mosque on the right of this picture.
The view in the other direction, with the minarets of Al-Azhar mosque cunningly disguising themselves as chair finials. Al-Azhar is a centre of Sunni orthodoxy which keeps getting mentioned in Albert Hourani's A History of the Arab Peoples (a very dense read, which I'm still working through). Hourani is so parsimonious with his human interest that it's good to be able to put a facade to a name.
I hope this shot doesn't give anyone headaches, but it does epitomise the endless round of vendors who throng the Midan Hussein restaurants. That over-laden boy is hawking bread to the restaurants, without much success that I could see. The vendors who did best were those selling luxuries, like music - lute-players (some commenter will correct my musical terminology) will join your table and play your request for a fee. (Those elegant missiles in the background, by the way, are metal parasols which open to shelter the crowds who gather before the mosque on Fridays.)
I ate chicken kebab on a bed of some parsley-like salad, and drank lemon juice (lots of it: throughout my trip I must have drunk about three times as much as usual in the arid heat). That meal was the most expensive I had in Egypt outside the five-star conference hotel. It would have been more so if I hadn't insisted on an itemised bill, which brought the price down by a quarter, and then corrected an arithmetical error, which saved me another twenty Egyptian pounds or so. Throughout the negotiations I cast frequent glances over the cashier's shoulder to the tourist policeman on the corner of the square; I didn't need to call him over, but he may have had something to do with the restaurant's flexibility.
The view from my dining table in Midan Hussein, Old Cairo. "Midan" means "square"; the Hussein referred to is the grandson of the Prophet Mohammed, whose relics are preserved in the mosque on the right of this picture.
The view in the other direction, with the minarets of Al-Azhar mosque cunningly disguising themselves as chair finials. Al-Azhar is a centre of Sunni orthodoxy which keeps getting mentioned in Albert Hourani's A History of the Arab Peoples (a very dense read, which I'm still working through). Hourani is so parsimonious with his human interest that it's good to be able to put a facade to a name.
I hope this shot doesn't give anyone headaches, but it does epitomise the endless round of vendors who throng the Midan Hussein restaurants. That over-laden boy is hawking bread to the restaurants, without much success that I could see. The vendors who did best were those selling luxuries, like music - lute-players (some commenter will correct my musical terminology) will join your table and play your request for a fee. (Those elegant missiles in the background, by the way, are metal parasols which open to shelter the crowds who gather before the mosque on Fridays.)I ate chicken kebab on a bed of some parsley-like salad, and drank lemon juice (lots of it: throughout my trip I must have drunk about three times as much as usual in the arid heat). That meal was the most expensive I had in Egypt outside the five-star conference hotel. It would have been more so if I hadn't insisted on an itemised bill, which brought the price down by a quarter, and then corrected an arithmetical error, which saved me another twenty Egyptian pounds or so. Throughout the negotiations I cast frequent glances over the cashier's shoulder to the tourist policeman on the corner of the square; I didn't need to call him over, but he may have had something to do with the restaurant's flexibility.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
In parenthesis
Phantom requests notwithstanding, I will continue with the planned programme - in a day or two. After all, Graça Machel's statements on the international stage have less impact on me than does exiting a chapa by the window, which I found myself doing on the way to the office a few Saturdays ago. It was far easier than forcing a way through the solid wall of fellow-passengers who stood between me and the door. Everyone understood. I'd worried that the cobrador might take me for a fare-dodger, but he just waited for me to figure out which way was up, then accepted my payment as usual. It all points to the reduction in public transport in Maputo, due in turn to rising fuel prices. I've since walked to the office on weekends.
Having said all that, last week I played host to my colleagues Kevin and Felix from Rwanda, who were all-eyed with admiration for the impressive gas guzzlers on Maputo streets. You don't see vehicles like that in Rwanda, they assure me. Rwanda dictates equality to its citizens; Mozambique breezily allows some to be more equal than others.
Having said all that, last week I played host to my colleagues Kevin and Felix from Rwanda, who were all-eyed with admiration for the impressive gas guzzlers on Maputo streets. You don't see vehicles like that in Rwanda, they assure me. Rwanda dictates equality to its citizens; Mozambique breezily allows some to be more equal than others.
Monday, June 23, 2008
Another bleedin' temple
Those balloons again, on their early-morning flights over the lunar landscape of the Theban Escarpment.
Apologies to those growing bored with the endless round of temples and tombs, but I'm not stopping now, not when I'm about to introduce my personal favourite among the temples of Luxor.
The Memorial Temple of Hatshepsut at Deir al-Bahri. The other great temple complexes grew and rambled over the centuries as different pharoahs added to them. Hatshepsut built this temple and it seems none of her successors felt they could improve upon it. The original purity of design remains, borrowing spectacle from those magnificent cliffs.
Hatshepsut's temple is also notable for its delicate carvings, many of which show a naturalism not usually associated with ancient Egyptian art.
But as ever, I have to show the human relationship with these old monuments. First the photo that shows I was there:
Photo by Shaik, if I spell his name correctly, a caretaker at the temple. He refused to accept the baksheesh I offered him for doing me this small service - by all accounts the caretakers earn miserable salaries and rely on baksheesh to supplement their incomes - until I used the unfailing formula "for your children".
Now the photo that shows everyone else was there too.
There's an astonishing view through that gateway, and I spent a long time waiting for the crowd to clear so I could photograph it, but this time the tour groups defeated my patience.
(This seems an appropriate moment to mention that even after the Pyramids, my personal prize for the largest and most intrusive crowds at any tourist site I've visited on my travels remains safely with Borobudur, Indonesia.)
Apologies to those growing bored with the endless round of temples and tombs, but I'm not stopping now, not when I'm about to introduce my personal favourite among the temples of Luxor.
The Memorial Temple of Hatshepsut at Deir al-Bahri. The other great temple complexes grew and rambled over the centuries as different pharoahs added to them. Hatshepsut built this temple and it seems none of her successors felt they could improve upon it. The original purity of design remains, borrowing spectacle from those magnificent cliffs.
Hatshepsut's temple is also notable for its delicate carvings, many of which show a naturalism not usually associated with ancient Egyptian art.
But as ever, I have to show the human relationship with these old monuments. First the photo that shows I was there:
Photo by Shaik, if I spell his name correctly, a caretaker at the temple. He refused to accept the baksheesh I offered him for doing me this small service - by all accounts the caretakers earn miserable salaries and rely on baksheesh to supplement their incomes - until I used the unfailing formula "for your children".
Now the photo that shows everyone else was there too.
There's an astonishing view through that gateway, and I spent a long time waiting for the crowd to clear so I could photograph it, but this time the tour groups defeated my patience.
(This seems an appropriate moment to mention that even after the Pyramids, my personal prize for the largest and most intrusive crowds at any tourist site I've visited on my travels remains safely with Borobudur, Indonesia.)
Monday, June 16, 2008
Silver service chez Ramses III
After the Valley of the Queens, Ahmed and I had time to swing by the temple complex at Medinat Habu. The site comprises a number of buildings, but they are well and truly dominated by the massive Memorial Temple of Ramses III.
Some people might be disappointed or annoyed to visit an ancient Egyptian monument and discover a small army of waiters setting up tables for formal cocktails and dinner.
Once the initial astonishment wore off, I was fascinated, and not merely by the aesthetic juxtaposition of sacred carvings and white tablecloths - nor by the puzzle of how high-heeled ladies or waiters laden with soup-tureens could remain upright on that undulating floor. It was yet another addition to the wide-ranging list of modern responses to ancient marvels. I keep talking about how awed and humbled I feel in the face of the age and scale and eternal scope of these temples. Here's a perfect counter-example - how to use the same temples to make oneself feel big. Who am I, dining in the company of the old pharoahs?
The temples of Medinat Habu also house the most impressive collection of Victorian-era graffiti of any Egyptian monument I visited. Look at N. Pearce! They just don't put that kind of effort into graffiti any more.
The ocean is not defiled by mere human filth, and the temples remain wondrous.
Some people might be disappointed or annoyed to visit an ancient Egyptian monument and discover a small army of waiters setting up tables for formal cocktails and dinner.
Once the initial astonishment wore off, I was fascinated, and not merely by the aesthetic juxtaposition of sacred carvings and white tablecloths - nor by the puzzle of how high-heeled ladies or waiters laden with soup-tureens could remain upright on that undulating floor. It was yet another addition to the wide-ranging list of modern responses to ancient marvels. I keep talking about how awed and humbled I feel in the face of the age and scale and eternal scope of these temples. Here's a perfect counter-example - how to use the same temples to make oneself feel big. Who am I, dining in the company of the old pharoahs?
The temples of Medinat Habu also house the most impressive collection of Victorian-era graffiti of any Egyptian monument I visited. Look at N. Pearce! They just don't put that kind of effort into graffiti any more.
The ocean is not defiled by mere human filth, and the temples remain wondrous.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Valley of the Queens and the Luxor catechism
I struck a bargain with Mr Ahmed, surely the most urbane of Luxor's taxi drivers, to drive me out to the Valley of the Queens for the afternoon. Photography isn't permitted inside the tombs, so my souvenir pictures are limited to the landscape.
Driving away from the Nile, one crosses a line where the irrigation ends - green on one side, sand-coloured on the other. Small villages dot the area, but outside them there is nothing green. It's an astounding barrenness, a clean skeleton of a land - entirely fitting for the great necropolises there.
With limited time, I didn't visit the Valley of the Kings. By all accounts, many tombs in the other necropolises are just as fascinating, but tour groups congregate where the notoriety is. Avoiding large groups when visiting tombs is no mere matter of aesthetics - or perhaps I should say it's a matter of atmosphere, literally. A small room deep underground rapidly fills with the exhalations of visitors. The tomb of Titi - the nearer of the two entrances in the photo above - contained maybe twenty other people when I entered. I couldn't endure the close air very long, and I don't remember a thing about the paintings.
I was lucky enough to catch a break between tour groups when I visited the tomb of Amunherkhepshef, a prince who died young. The beautiful and well-preserved wall paintings show the pharoah presenting his small son to various gods. I studied them at leisure, accompanied only by the caretaker, who spoke no English but who fanned me solicitously.
It must have been on this day that I started taking notes on the Luxor catechism. Wherever you go in Luxor, the taxi drivers, tomb caretakers, tourist guides and market vendors ask the same questions. If people know only a few words of English, they know parts of this catechism. It always starts with an enthusiastic "Welcome!" and should be liberally punctuated with the same.
I don't mean to mock anyone's language skills. The average souvenir-seller in Luxor puts most English speakers to shame in that respect - their livelihood depends on it. If I ignored a spiel in English, vendors would try me with Italian, French or German.
As I emerged from the Valley of the Queens, I asked the massed vendors at the gate whether any of them could sell me images of the wall-paintings I'd just admired. Somehow the request for pictures came out in Portuguese - but it was understood, and there was a general flurry as every vendor present rushed to check his stock of postcards. No one had any, but the request flew the length of the row of shops faster than I walked it. As I was about to leave, the one man who had what I wanted hurried over, saying, "Are you the lady who speaks Spanish?"
I bought his book of photos, but the price we agreed on, after a long exchange of offers and counter-offers, plainly wasn't up to his expectations. I did warn him that I came from Mozambique. Surely his other Mozambican friends must have told him we can bargain.
Driving away from the Nile, one crosses a line where the irrigation ends - green on one side, sand-coloured on the other. Small villages dot the area, but outside them there is nothing green. It's an astounding barrenness, a clean skeleton of a land - entirely fitting for the great necropolises there.
With limited time, I didn't visit the Valley of the Kings. By all accounts, many tombs in the other necropolises are just as fascinating, but tour groups congregate where the notoriety is. Avoiding large groups when visiting tombs is no mere matter of aesthetics - or perhaps I should say it's a matter of atmosphere, literally. A small room deep underground rapidly fills with the exhalations of visitors. The tomb of Titi - the nearer of the two entrances in the photo above - contained maybe twenty other people when I entered. I couldn't endure the close air very long, and I don't remember a thing about the paintings.
I was lucky enough to catch a break between tour groups when I visited the tomb of Amunherkhepshef, a prince who died young. The beautiful and well-preserved wall paintings show the pharoah presenting his small son to various gods. I studied them at leisure, accompanied only by the caretaker, who spoke no English but who fanned me solicitously.
It must have been on this day that I started taking notes on the Luxor catechism. Wherever you go in Luxor, the taxi drivers, tomb caretakers, tourist guides and market vendors ask the same questions. If people know only a few words of English, they know parts of this catechism. It always starts with an enthusiastic "Welcome!" and should be liberally punctuated with the same.
Welcome!("Egyptian market?" was a specialty of Luxor's caleche (pony cart) drivers. They explain that Luxor's main souk is for tourists and offer to show a real Egyptian market of the kind where the locals shop. I tried to explain that, being from Mozambique, I shopped in (ahem) picturesque markets all the time, and the local version wasn't very high on my list of priorities. But the caleche drivers' determination was remarkable. Close to 11pm on my second day I sleepily climbed into a caleche to get from the Karnak sound-and-light show to the ferry terminal, and in the five-minute ride the driver enquired "Egyptian market?" three times.)
Alexa: Thank you.
Which country?
Alexa: Mozambique.
Mozambique? Very nice people. (Shop owners add: I have many friends in Mozambique.)
First time here?
Alexa: Yes.
How long you stay?
Alexa: Just a few days.
Not long enough.
Alexa: I know. I'll come back.
Egyptian market?
Alexa: No thanks.
I don't mean to mock anyone's language skills. The average souvenir-seller in Luxor puts most English speakers to shame in that respect - their livelihood depends on it. If I ignored a spiel in English, vendors would try me with Italian, French or German.
As I emerged from the Valley of the Queens, I asked the massed vendors at the gate whether any of them could sell me images of the wall-paintings I'd just admired. Somehow the request for pictures came out in Portuguese - but it was understood, and there was a general flurry as every vendor present rushed to check his stock of postcards. No one had any, but the request flew the length of the row of shops faster than I walked it. As I was about to leave, the one man who had what I wanted hurried over, saying, "Are you the lady who speaks Spanish?"
I bought his book of photos, but the price we agreed on, after a long exchange of offers and counter-offers, plainly wasn't up to his expectations. I did warn him that I came from Mozambique. Surely his other Mozambican friends must have told him we can bargain.
Thursday, June 05, 2008
Karnak
After waiting out so many tour groups at Luxor Temple the previous day, I was determined to get to Karnak before everyone else. I woke at 5.00am and was at the ferry terminal by half-past, buying a breakfast of sweet bread rolls from a headscarved girl. I'd planned to take the ferry to the east bank and walk to Karnak - it's a couple of kilometres from the heart of town - but a man with a launch (pronounced "lunch") quickly persuaded me to pay a little more for the ride downriver.
So I approached the temple the way the old priests did, by water, walking up the stone stairs on the bank of the Nile and across the wide square before the monumental gate. The sun was just rising. When the temple opened at six, there were a handful of temple caretakers and tourist police, one other independent tourist and her guide, and me.
I wandered alone in the awe-inspiring hypostyle hall, absorbing the place.
Being alone in Karnak is a rare and beautiful experience - but the photos you get don't do much to convey the astonishing scale of the place to people who weren't there. The photo above makes the columns look about ten feet tall. I have to admit that other tourists sometimes have their uses. Here's a photo from later in the morning.
The guidebook reports that at 10.30 a convoy of about 150 tour buses arrives from Hurghada and starts to disgorge its crowds into the temple. The photo below was actually taken before that.
I've sworn off ever joining a tour group, having spent hours exploring masterpieces like Karnak, and in that time watching busloads of exhausted Germans and Japanese moping through their five-minute lectures from guides before trooping off to the next item deemed worthy of interest. Take, for example, a small side chamber of the temple, filled with intriguing carvings which I studied at leisure when I had the place to myself in the early morning.
The obliterated figure is Hatshepsut, the most successful of Egypt's various queens; the chains of ankh symbols represent the water of life with which the gods Horus and Thoth anoint her. Hatshepsut was a great builder who added considerably to the temple (the whole complex is a great rambling maze, with additions by every pharoah who had the resources), but many of her images, here and elsewhere, have been erased like this.
I couldn't take that photo in the early morning; my camera was playing games again. In a way that was a good thing, as I could meet the temple on its own terms, without worrying about camera angles and compositions. I threaded my way through the maze of halls, chapels and courts from the huge entrance forecourt to the modest Temple of the Hearing Ear at the rear of the complex, where I sat for one of the most memorable breakfasts of my life, comprising bread, water and Karnak.
Then I bought overpriced batteries from the souvenir shop and worked my way back through the complex, taking most of my photos. Seeking out that intriguing side chamber, I waited perhaps ten minutes for the crowds at the doorway to clear. They were tour groups, waiting in line for the preceding group to emerge from the chamber. Small chambers like that must have a strict schedule, with each tour company allotted a few minutes only, so that everyone gets a turn. Eventually I slipped in behind one of the smaller groups so I could take my photos.
I may have fancied the dirty look from the guide, but elsewhere tour guides asked me to move along, with unsmiling politeness. Apparently I spoiled the atmosphere.
As for that obliterated figure, the tour guides I heard were united in their explanation that Hatshepsut's successor and stepson set out to destroy all records of her reign. As I wasn't paying for their services, I never asked the obvious question of why he did such a patchy job of it. Since returning home I've done a bit of background investigation and discovered the matter may be a bit more complicated, but I can see how the more dramatic family saga, complete with political intrigue, conniving theocrats and revenge, would be regarded as more suitable for tourists.
A view from towards the back of the complex - the Temple of the Hearing Ear is behind me at this point. That one can't even see the hypostyle hall from here indicates the huge scale of the complex. Tourist police are on the right; at the extreme left I just managed to catch a distant hot-air balloon. One can take an early-morning balloon ride over the west bank.
I returned to Karnak that night for the sound-and-light show. It was worth it for the magical walk through the spotlit temple, but the voiceover was cringe-inducing cliche-ridden overheated C-grade tripe. The best part was when it stopped and the audience returned to the entrance via some of the temple's most impressive monuments. Tour groups hastened through the marvels as though in a shopping mall. I stepped off the main path in the hypostyle hall and lingered in the shadows, gazing up at the stars between those papyrus capitals. It was a short eternal moment before the guards swept up the stragglers like me and shepherded us back into the bustle of Luxor at night.
So I approached the temple the way the old priests did, by water, walking up the stone stairs on the bank of the Nile and across the wide square before the monumental gate. The sun was just rising. When the temple opened at six, there were a handful of temple caretakers and tourist police, one other independent tourist and her guide, and me.
I wandered alone in the awe-inspiring hypostyle hall, absorbing the place.
Being alone in Karnak is a rare and beautiful experience - but the photos you get don't do much to convey the astonishing scale of the place to people who weren't there. The photo above makes the columns look about ten feet tall. I have to admit that other tourists sometimes have their uses. Here's a photo from later in the morning.
The guidebook reports that at 10.30 a convoy of about 150 tour buses arrives from Hurghada and starts to disgorge its crowds into the temple. The photo below was actually taken before that.
I've sworn off ever joining a tour group, having spent hours exploring masterpieces like Karnak, and in that time watching busloads of exhausted Germans and Japanese moping through their five-minute lectures from guides before trooping off to the next item deemed worthy of interest. Take, for example, a small side chamber of the temple, filled with intriguing carvings which I studied at leisure when I had the place to myself in the early morning.
The obliterated figure is Hatshepsut, the most successful of Egypt's various queens; the chains of ankh symbols represent the water of life with which the gods Horus and Thoth anoint her. Hatshepsut was a great builder who added considerably to the temple (the whole complex is a great rambling maze, with additions by every pharoah who had the resources), but many of her images, here and elsewhere, have been erased like this.
I couldn't take that photo in the early morning; my camera was playing games again. In a way that was a good thing, as I could meet the temple on its own terms, without worrying about camera angles and compositions. I threaded my way through the maze of halls, chapels and courts from the huge entrance forecourt to the modest Temple of the Hearing Ear at the rear of the complex, where I sat for one of the most memorable breakfasts of my life, comprising bread, water and Karnak.
Then I bought overpriced batteries from the souvenir shop and worked my way back through the complex, taking most of my photos. Seeking out that intriguing side chamber, I waited perhaps ten minutes for the crowds at the doorway to clear. They were tour groups, waiting in line for the preceding group to emerge from the chamber. Small chambers like that must have a strict schedule, with each tour company allotted a few minutes only, so that everyone gets a turn. Eventually I slipped in behind one of the smaller groups so I could take my photos.
I may have fancied the dirty look from the guide, but elsewhere tour guides asked me to move along, with unsmiling politeness. Apparently I spoiled the atmosphere.
As for that obliterated figure, the tour guides I heard were united in their explanation that Hatshepsut's successor and stepson set out to destroy all records of her reign. As I wasn't paying for their services, I never asked the obvious question of why he did such a patchy job of it. Since returning home I've done a bit of background investigation and discovered the matter may be a bit more complicated, but I can see how the more dramatic family saga, complete with political intrigue, conniving theocrats and revenge, would be regarded as more suitable for tourists.
A view from towards the back of the complex - the Temple of the Hearing Ear is behind me at this point. That one can't even see the hypostyle hall from here indicates the huge scale of the complex. Tourist police are on the right; at the extreme left I just managed to catch a distant hot-air balloon. One can take an early-morning balloon ride over the west bank.
I returned to Karnak that night for the sound-and-light show. It was worth it for the magical walk through the spotlit temple, but the voiceover was cringe-inducing cliche-ridden overheated C-grade tripe. The best part was when it stopped and the audience returned to the entrance via some of the temple's most impressive monuments. Tour groups hastened through the marvels as though in a shopping mall. I stepped off the main path in the hypostyle hall and lingered in the shadows, gazing up at the stars between those papyrus capitals. It was a short eternal moment before the guards swept up the stragglers like me and shepherded us back into the bustle of Luxor at night.
Saturday, May 31, 2008
The El Feyrouz Hotel
Last year I posted this photo of one of the Nile's many sources, this one in Rwanda. Here's how the same river looks downstream, at Luxor.
That's looking back at the east bank, where the city of Luxor - about half a million people - stands. The east bank is where you get money, tangle with bureaucrats, eat pizza and find lots of scrubby hotels with big painted signs promising cold beer.
I'd rung ahead to a hotel on the west bank, which the guidebook assured me was much quieter. The locals who pointed me towards the ferry terminal all emphasised that the fare was one pound - which I knew from the guidebook, and I wondered about their insistence until it came to boarding and the men selling tickets wanted me to pay two pounds for a return trip. There are no tickets, so I would have had to pay again when I returned.
Luxor seems to be known as the scam and hassle capital of Egypt. Perhaps because I'm accustomed to Mozambique, or just respectful of the sad fact that everyone has to earn a living somehow, I never felt much bothered. For every local with a scam there's another willing to step in with a warning; taxi drivers and felucca (sailboat) captains are quick to step forward with offers, but responded well enough to being politely declined. I should clarify that in my book, shyness about bargaining on a tourist's part does not constitute a scam on a local's part.
Harassment wasn't a problem either. There was a lot of joking around from the men who deal with tourists, along the lines of the shopkeeper who bounded wide-eyed to his door with the line "I must be dreaming!" as I walked past. Either I wasn't in the country long enough to lose patience with it, or I've now travelled enough to know there are worse things to hear from men in foreign countries. Only in one case (a camel-driver at the Pyramids) did I feel the need to tell someone he was behaving badly, and he desisted at once.
Nor was security an issue. The locals with whom I got chatting were always highly amused, and quick to reassure me, when they noticed my Mozambican habit of constantly glancing around to check who was getting close - though I found it interesting that they recognised the mannerism for a security precaution. Many remarked on my travelling alone, but said things like "most tourists are frightened to travel alone" rather than "it's risky to travel alone". (I'm sure they're right, but if the average tourist is opting for group travel for security reasons, it's surely counter-productive - big groups give terrorists more news value.)
Security at tourist sites was generally perfunctory, at least for this obvious foreigner (with interesting exceptions, such as the synagogue in Coptic Cairo). I had to step through metal detectors to enter temples and museums, but no one wanted to search my bag. Tourist police in their handsome white uniforms quietly kept their stations at all the major sites. It was reassuring to have them around, though I never needed them for anything other than directions.
That digression was an appropriately roundabout way of getting to my hotel. The walk from the west bank ferry terminal involved a lengthy discussion with a couple of taxi drivers about the causes of terrorism in Egypt (they both blamed economic conditions created largely by their own government, not anything foreigners did) and a pause for mint tea in a garden cafe (it was a blazing blue-skied day of around 40 degrees), then a short stroll through the side streets.
The El Feyrouz Hotel was certainly easy to find, a big pink cake of a building.
It was a perfect hotel for me - simple, clean and comfortable. The pre-dawn muezzin's call woke me on my first morning there ("prayer is better than sleep") but I slept through it on the second day. There was a lush garden and restaurant.
I enjoyed Egyptian food, which is long on spices and vegetables. A typical meal involves waiters placing a dozen different dishes on your table - aromatic stews, spiced rice, hommus, babaganoush, salads, stacks of flatbread - from which you take your choice. It's great for groups, or those made ravenous by scrambling around temples and tombs in the heat; light eaters like myself spend plenty of time explaining that the food really was delicious but there's just no room for another bite.
I didn't sample Egyptian wines at this stage (more on this later). I was enjoying the experience too much to want to blunt my senses. I didn't even open a book (other than the guidebook) for six days, which must be a personal record. I felt no need to slip into another world when the one around me was so constantly entrancing.
That's looking back at the east bank, where the city of Luxor - about half a million people - stands. The east bank is where you get money, tangle with bureaucrats, eat pizza and find lots of scrubby hotels with big painted signs promising cold beer.
I'd rung ahead to a hotel on the west bank, which the guidebook assured me was much quieter. The locals who pointed me towards the ferry terminal all emphasised that the fare was one pound - which I knew from the guidebook, and I wondered about their insistence until it came to boarding and the men selling tickets wanted me to pay two pounds for a return trip. There are no tickets, so I would have had to pay again when I returned.
Luxor seems to be known as the scam and hassle capital of Egypt. Perhaps because I'm accustomed to Mozambique, or just respectful of the sad fact that everyone has to earn a living somehow, I never felt much bothered. For every local with a scam there's another willing to step in with a warning; taxi drivers and felucca (sailboat) captains are quick to step forward with offers, but responded well enough to being politely declined. I should clarify that in my book, shyness about bargaining on a tourist's part does not constitute a scam on a local's part.
Harassment wasn't a problem either. There was a lot of joking around from the men who deal with tourists, along the lines of the shopkeeper who bounded wide-eyed to his door with the line "I must be dreaming!" as I walked past. Either I wasn't in the country long enough to lose patience with it, or I've now travelled enough to know there are worse things to hear from men in foreign countries. Only in one case (a camel-driver at the Pyramids) did I feel the need to tell someone he was behaving badly, and he desisted at once.
Nor was security an issue. The locals with whom I got chatting were always highly amused, and quick to reassure me, when they noticed my Mozambican habit of constantly glancing around to check who was getting close - though I found it interesting that they recognised the mannerism for a security precaution. Many remarked on my travelling alone, but said things like "most tourists are frightened to travel alone" rather than "it's risky to travel alone". (I'm sure they're right, but if the average tourist is opting for group travel for security reasons, it's surely counter-productive - big groups give terrorists more news value.)
Security at tourist sites was generally perfunctory, at least for this obvious foreigner (with interesting exceptions, such as the synagogue in Coptic Cairo). I had to step through metal detectors to enter temples and museums, but no one wanted to search my bag. Tourist police in their handsome white uniforms quietly kept their stations at all the major sites. It was reassuring to have them around, though I never needed them for anything other than directions.
That digression was an appropriately roundabout way of getting to my hotel. The walk from the west bank ferry terminal involved a lengthy discussion with a couple of taxi drivers about the causes of terrorism in Egypt (they both blamed economic conditions created largely by their own government, not anything foreigners did) and a pause for mint tea in a garden cafe (it was a blazing blue-skied day of around 40 degrees), then a short stroll through the side streets.
The El Feyrouz Hotel was certainly easy to find, a big pink cake of a building.
It was a perfect hotel for me - simple, clean and comfortable. The pre-dawn muezzin's call woke me on my first morning there ("prayer is better than sleep") but I slept through it on the second day. There was a lush garden and restaurant.
I enjoyed Egyptian food, which is long on spices and vegetables. A typical meal involves waiters placing a dozen different dishes on your table - aromatic stews, spiced rice, hommus, babaganoush, salads, stacks of flatbread - from which you take your choice. It's great for groups, or those made ravenous by scrambling around temples and tombs in the heat; light eaters like myself spend plenty of time explaining that the food really was delicious but there's just no room for another bite.
I didn't sample Egyptian wines at this stage (more on this later). I was enjoying the experience too much to want to blunt my senses. I didn't even open a book (other than the guidebook) for six days, which must be a personal record. I felt no need to slip into another world when the one around me was so constantly entrancing.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Luxor Temple
The sleeping train from Cairo arrives in Luxor before 7.00 AM. I stowed my bag in the left luggage office, smiled through the ambush of taxi drivers outside the station, and walked down Sharia al-Mahatta towards the Nile. Luxor's governor is cleaning up the town, aiming perhaps more for the comfort of tourists than of average locals: the street is like a sand-coloured shopping mall. Maputo streets would be bustling by that hour, but in Luxor things start more slowly. About five minutes into the walk, sniggering at the steadily declining fares offered by my remaining attendant taxi driver, I glanced up and saw the tallest lotus capitals of Luxor Temple between the shop-fronts.
It's humbling and deflating to meet them so unexpectedly, when a moment ago you were absorbed in your own fleeting concerns. I know the pharoahs built to make people like me feel small, but I'm amazed at how effective it still is, even for those of us who should be well and truly inoculated against the ideology.
Not everyone is so respectful, of course. The obelisk that belongs on the right side of the gate in the above photo is presently in the Place de la Concorde, Paris.
Of course the French were only the more recent of a succession of visitors who for whom the place was just a resource. The Arabs built a mosque atop the old temple walls:
That was long after the Romans had adapted it for use as a fortress, covering the heiroglyphs with their frescos.
Heiroglyphs that somehow never made it into the history books I read as a child: cattle ready for sacrifice at the temple.
More conventionally festive, acrobats doing backflips in the celebrations for the yearly Opet festival.
And that was just the morning in Luxor. I'll come back to the rest of the day, but I'd best post this before solid people get impatient.
(Photo actually taken at sunset the next day, but it seems to belong here.)
It's humbling and deflating to meet them so unexpectedly, when a moment ago you were absorbed in your own fleeting concerns. I know the pharoahs built to make people like me feel small, but I'm amazed at how effective it still is, even for those of us who should be well and truly inoculated against the ideology.
Not everyone is so respectful, of course. The obelisk that belongs on the right side of the gate in the above photo is presently in the Place de la Concorde, Paris.
Of course the French were only the more recent of a succession of visitors who for whom the place was just a resource. The Arabs built a mosque atop the old temple walls:
That was long after the Romans had adapted it for use as a fortress, covering the heiroglyphs with their frescos.
Heiroglyphs that somehow never made it into the history books I read as a child: cattle ready for sacrifice at the temple.
More conventionally festive, acrobats doing backflips in the celebrations for the yearly Opet festival.
And that was just the morning in Luxor. I'll come back to the rest of the day, but I'd best post this before solid people get impatient.
(Photo actually taken at sunset the next day, but it seems to belong here.)
Sunday, May 25, 2008
First day in Cairo
My camera played up on my first day in Cairo, so the only photo I can show you from that day is this unsteady shot of St Barbara's church in the Coptic quarter.
After a few hours in Cairo, I needed to sit quietly in a peaceful medieval church. Occasional tour groups somewhat dispelled the atmosphere, though it was worth it to hear one tour guide, explaining a frieze of Jesus' miracles to Japanese tourists, refer to the "super powers of Jesus".
Having just spent six of the most wonderful days of my life travelling in Egypt, I feel authorised to pontificate on the key to successful holiday travel, which is to plan to do not too much. For my first day in Cairo, my only other goal, besides the Coptic quarter, was to visit the Egyptian Museum.
Even that was a bit too much for one day. It's a spectacularly cluttered museum, so crammed with treasures that much of it gets pushed into dusty side compartments - I wandered into one of these accidentally, enjoying the sense of antiquities so common as to be put aside and forgotten, until I ran into staff working on computers and realised I wasn't supposed to be where I was.
I should have left after a couple of hours, while my taste was still sharp, but in such an important museum there's always some important piece remembered from art classes waiting in the next gallery, and one more gallery won't hurt. The extravagance of Tutankhamun's burial treasures are a glittering blur. At least I found the Amarna room early. Akhenaton's strange smile, literally so far above the small matters of humans, will stay with me a long time. There are four near-identical colossi of him in the Amarna room, but in one of them the conventional serene smile has a strange grim twist in the corners, and that's the one I remember.
The average photo in art books does these colossi no justice. Certainly, to understand what the Amarna smile is, you need to see it as the average photo shows you, full-face and properly lit. But to understand what the Amarna smile is, you need to see Akhenaton gazing far over your head, his stone mind on eternal matters, smiling at his thoughts.
The other event of note on my first day in Cairo was that I did probably the most dangerous thing I've ever done, which was to cross the Corniche El-Nil on foot at peak hour as I walked into town from the Coptic district. Locals do this at a walking pace, somehow; I did the split-second tourist dash. Most of my travels around Cairo that day were actually done on the metro, which was cheap, trouble-free and no dirtier than the Paris metro. Each subway train has a couple of carriages designated for women only. I thought I'd be respectfully dressed in my ankle-length skirt and modest blouse, but I kept finding myself with the only bare arms on the carriage. Headscarves are near-universal. Trousers are fine, glitter and jewellery is plainly expected, and even figure-hugging tops are acceptable, but the only skin to be shown is face and hands.
More of this tomorrow. By the time I'm finished posting about Egypt, it'll be clear why it has taken so long to get around to it.
After a few hours in Cairo, I needed to sit quietly in a peaceful medieval church. Occasional tour groups somewhat dispelled the atmosphere, though it was worth it to hear one tour guide, explaining a frieze of Jesus' miracles to Japanese tourists, refer to the "super powers of Jesus".
Having just spent six of the most wonderful days of my life travelling in Egypt, I feel authorised to pontificate on the key to successful holiday travel, which is to plan to do not too much. For my first day in Cairo, my only other goal, besides the Coptic quarter, was to visit the Egyptian Museum.
Even that was a bit too much for one day. It's a spectacularly cluttered museum, so crammed with treasures that much of it gets pushed into dusty side compartments - I wandered into one of these accidentally, enjoying the sense of antiquities so common as to be put aside and forgotten, until I ran into staff working on computers and realised I wasn't supposed to be where I was.
I should have left after a couple of hours, while my taste was still sharp, but in such an important museum there's always some important piece remembered from art classes waiting in the next gallery, and one more gallery won't hurt. The extravagance of Tutankhamun's burial treasures are a glittering blur. At least I found the Amarna room early. Akhenaton's strange smile, literally so far above the small matters of humans, will stay with me a long time. There are four near-identical colossi of him in the Amarna room, but in one of them the conventional serene smile has a strange grim twist in the corners, and that's the one I remember.
The average photo in art books does these colossi no justice. Certainly, to understand what the Amarna smile is, you need to see it as the average photo shows you, full-face and properly lit. But to understand what the Amarna smile is, you need to see Akhenaton gazing far over your head, his stone mind on eternal matters, smiling at his thoughts.
The other event of note on my first day in Cairo was that I did probably the most dangerous thing I've ever done, which was to cross the Corniche El-Nil on foot at peak hour as I walked into town from the Coptic district. Locals do this at a walking pace, somehow; I did the split-second tourist dash. Most of my travels around Cairo that day were actually done on the metro, which was cheap, trouble-free and no dirtier than the Paris metro. Each subway train has a couple of carriages designated for women only. I thought I'd be respectfully dressed in my ankle-length skirt and modest blouse, but I kept finding myself with the only bare arms on the carriage. Headscarves are near-universal. Trousers are fine, glitter and jewellery is plainly expected, and even figure-hugging tops are acceptable, but the only skin to be shown is face and hands.
More of this tomorrow. By the time I'm finished posting about Egypt, it'll be clear why it has taken so long to get around to it.
Friday, April 18, 2008
A Nigerian ate my laptop
It's past my bedtime here, but I'll post quickly to celebrate clearing two months' worth of photos off my camera. I used to download to a certain laptop assigned to the IT department, but had to hand it over temporarily to another staffer whose own laptop was sent for repairs. My certain laptop was then stolen from a hotel room in Chimoio while my colleague was out lunching. The hotel room keys were in the care of the cleaner and the manager at the time, but according to the police report it was stolen by a Nigerian who dropped by. Only God is all-knowing.
At any rate four new laptops have arrived and I've been told to put my name on one of them - which sounds impressive until you learn that the laptops are a donation from Lenovo, so cost the bank nothing. Still, I can always lie to strangers in airports.
A photo which goes some way to showing why I have plenty of work in Mozambique, especially as the clock tower has "TDM" prominently displayed - my old nightmare, Telecomunicacoes de Mocambique. (Yes, I have not yet had time to install a Portuguese keyboard on this new laptop.) A view of the city of Beira, one of the stops on my March trip.
At any rate four new laptops have arrived and I've been told to put my name on one of them - which sounds impressive until you learn that the laptops are a donation from Lenovo, so cost the bank nothing. Still, I can always lie to strangers in airports.
A photo which goes some way to showing why I have plenty of work in Mozambique, especially as the clock tower has "TDM" prominently displayed - my old nightmare, Telecomunicacoes de Mocambique. (Yes, I have not yet had time to install a Portuguese keyboard on this new laptop.) A view of the city of Beira, one of the stops on my March trip.
Tuesday, April 08, 2008
Dia da Mulher Moçambicana
That means Mozambican Women's Day, 7 April, and it also means that every restaurant and barraca in town will be crowded with noisy sororities dressed in identical capulanas, dancing and ululating. I well remember this day in 2004 when I was working for Cruz Vermelha de Moçambique and had travelled to Nampula to do some staff training. Quite a few of the staff agreed to come in on the public holiday and we had a very successful session, all accompanied by gleeful ululation from the ladies in the Centro Social next door, from midday onward. Typically for me, this year I'm celebrating the holiday by repartitioning the main database server and watching progress bars creep across screens as all the databases get re-created. This office is a lot quieter than the CVM one.
Please stand by for a post explaining what kept me so frantically occupied in March. There are supposed to be photos, though, and I still haven't been granted an opportunity to sit down with that camera and figure out why this machine won't download them.
Sleep, eat, write, configure server, sleep.
Please stand by for a post explaining what kept me so frantically occupied in March. There are supposed to be photos, though, and I still haven't been granted an opportunity to sit down with that camera and figure out why this machine won't download them.
Sleep, eat, write, configure server, sleep.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
A day late
(I wrote it at the weekend as promised, but I didn't have a flash drive to take it to the office. I'd have gone home at Monday lunch to pick it up, but our chapas pulled a perfectly timed strike. The well-known issue continues to simmer. I'd also hoped to have a few more photographs, but this computer is too tired to recognise my camera.)
Mookxie's comment last week reminded me it's high time for an update on progress on those 101 tasks I set myself back in January, as people keep swinging by here from the link on the 101 things site. I won't mention every task which is in progress, but a few of them deserve comment.
1. Finish drafting and revising City In Spate and start sending it to publishers or agents.
74,000 words, at the moment. Far from finished.
6. Read the Bible, other than 1 Chronicles and Psalms.
So far I've read Judges, Ruth, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, Esther, Ecclesiastes, Daniel, Hosea, Jonah, Nahum, Habukkuk and Zechariah.
I used to spend the chapa ride each morning reading work-related material, but last year, having no reports to hand, I grabbed instead the copy of The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius which was lying on the dining table at the time. Commuting amid blaring gangsta rap with strangers' crotches pressed (in all innocence) against my shoulder, I read: "Art thou angry with him whose arm-pits stink? Art thou angry with him whose mouth smells foul? What good will this anger do thee?" And so forth: a great deal about how to endure provocations with equanimity.
It struck me then that the chapa ride to work was the correct place to read devotional literature. Anyone can love one's fellow humans and feel close to the divine in the privacy of one's room. The difficult task is to do it in the thick of worldly annoyances and blandishments. So it's become my practice to read spiritual texts on the morning chapa. This is fine for, say, the Dhammapada, which teaches the transcending of worldly experience - "exercising the utmost restraint, possessing inner delight, composed, solitary, and content". But I swear I'll never read the Old Testament on the chapa. All that smiting and destruction and dashing the little ones against the stones – I'd do murder every morning under that influence.
Having said that, all that Old Testament violence and hatred makes me appreciate what a revolution Jesus must have been. Probably most of us are so familiar with the injunction to love our enemies that it's lost a lot of its power. It must have been flabbergasting to the first-century Jews when they first heard it from that young teacher in the synagogue, after all that smiting they'd previously been taught.
18. Buy one of those gorgeous glass pendants from Ngwenya glass in Swaziland for my mother.
Done, but photographic evidence won't be posted until my mother has seen it.
The other purchase of interest in Swaziland was a bundle of candles from the wonderful Swazi Candles. For item 11, I hope to be in India during Deepavali, which means giving gifts of lights.
37. Go to the Museu da História Natural.
Done. See last week's post for photographic evidence.
45. Find my super payout from DSS.
46. Take care of that other super.
I occasionally need to email a Mozambican government agency – most often the notorious Telecomunições de Moçambique, the carrier that can't explain why it frequently drops our lines for ten minutes at random intervals, and whose técnicos were last year completely unaware that the satellite link between Maputo and Quelimane had been replaced by a fibre optic cable until two months after the event. I don't have a very high opinion of their competence, but they do at least reply to emails – which more than Ausfund or the Australian Department of Human Services have done. Follow-up emails were sent last week.
47. Keep my living expenses to less than 60% of my take-home salary.
Done. Shortly after posting these goals, I did a personal budget for the first time in my life and was pleasantly surprised to discover I was within an ace of this anyway. I trimmed back sufficiently by preparing my own lunches instead of buying a prego no pão (steak sandwich) or frango grelhado (grilled chicken) every day – there isn't much else available, unless you don't mind dobrada (tripe) with your feijão (bean stew). That was before a recent modest pay rise. Some of that rise will go to Dona Luisa the empregada and Sr Micas the guard, and I have to mind the value of the American dollar because I have the infernal inconvenience of paying my rent in dollars even though my salary is in meticais. But I think I'm okay, budget-wise, for the foreseeable future - pela graça do Deus.
50. Clear my wardrobe of clothes I don't wear anymore.
Done. Had Dona Luisa not been defeated by the chapa strike, she would have found a good-sized backpack stuffed with clothes sitting next to the kitchen garbage on Monday morning. She is always far more stylishly dressed than I am so I doubt she'll be adopting any of my cast-offs in a hurry, but most of them are good enough to sell to a second-hand vendor for a bit of extra cash.
52. Get rid of all old papers I don't need anymore.
Done. It's a shame I didn't think of taking a "before" photo, or better still a "during" photo, when paid water bills and boarding passes dating back to 2005 had been sorted into heaps all over the living room floor. It could have been an inspiration to all.
67. Give away all the books on my shelves which annoy me.
There's a new café in town – or, it was new to me; every other foreign female with pretensions to knowing her macchiato from her mocha seems surprised I didn't know – which not only packages its own fair-trade coffee, but which maintains a book exchange. It was entirely English-language when I checked a couple of weeks ago, as I dropped off a couple of unwanted gifts. It will take a few more trips to unclog my shelves completely, but this should be done in a month or two.
The other point I like about this café is that it stands on Rua Beijo da Mulata, a mulata being a woman of mixed race and an a beijo being a kiss. It wouldn't be allowed in Australia.
76. Get involved in the Maputo Professional Women's Network.
I mind the database for this group, but I'll mark this as done after I've participated in (and posted more details about) our first event, which is set for 12 March.
101. Be able to find and name 100 stars.
I'm typing this at 20.00 in my living room on a Sunday night. I was hoping to go out onto my balcony and check that I can remember what I've learned, but the night's come over cloudy, so I'll have to do this from my imagination.
Standing on my living room balcony – facing west by north-west - on a clear night I can look up and see Orion. The red star in the lower right corner is Betelgeuse. Clockwise from there, the other points of the rectangle are Bellatrix, Rigel and Saiph. The leftmost star in Orion's belt is Mintaka. Between Orion and the horizon, the bright reddish star is El Nath, and the sparkler off to its left is Aldebaran, both in Taurus. To the right of El Nath is Castor and Pollux in Gemini. The brightest star in the sky is Sirius, to the right of Orion. Sirius and Betelgeuse make an equilateral triangle with Procyon. Canopus is somewhere above my roof, but I can't check it from here.
From my kitchen balcony I can see the Southern Cross, which is easy, because the three brightest stars are called Acrux (the lowest star on the Australian flag), Becrux (the left arm) and Gacrux (the uppermost star on the flag) – but if you are a poetical snob like me, you can call Becrux Mimosa. Everyone should know Alpha and Beta Centauri if they don't – at least those who reside in the southern hemisphere. More or less on the opposite side of the celestial south pole to Crux, the big sparkler is Achernar.
At this hour of the evening I can't recognise a single star from the balcony of the spare bedroom – facing north by north-east - but when I struggle out of bed at 4.30 in the morning I can see the constellation Scorpio. The red star on the scorpion's back is Antares, the brighter of the two stars in the sting is Shaula, and the fainter of the two is Lesath.
I just checked the above in my star charts. Twenty stars, until I can be sure of Canopus.
The names of stars and constellations are poetry to me, but I'm aware that to many the preceding paragraphs must be the most boring in this post. To them I say: be grateful I'm not giving you a similar account of what I'm learning from item 8, reading Economic Literacy.
Mookxie's comment last week reminded me it's high time for an update on progress on those 101 tasks I set myself back in January, as people keep swinging by here from the link on the 101 things site. I won't mention every task which is in progress, but a few of them deserve comment.
1. Finish drafting and revising City In Spate and start sending it to publishers or agents.
74,000 words, at the moment. Far from finished.
6. Read the Bible, other than 1 Chronicles and Psalms.
So far I've read Judges, Ruth, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, Esther, Ecclesiastes, Daniel, Hosea, Jonah, Nahum, Habukkuk and Zechariah.
I used to spend the chapa ride each morning reading work-related material, but last year, having no reports to hand, I grabbed instead the copy of The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius which was lying on the dining table at the time. Commuting amid blaring gangsta rap with strangers' crotches pressed (in all innocence) against my shoulder, I read: "Art thou angry with him whose arm-pits stink? Art thou angry with him whose mouth smells foul? What good will this anger do thee?" And so forth: a great deal about how to endure provocations with equanimity.
It struck me then that the chapa ride to work was the correct place to read devotional literature. Anyone can love one's fellow humans and feel close to the divine in the privacy of one's room. The difficult task is to do it in the thick of worldly annoyances and blandishments. So it's become my practice to read spiritual texts on the morning chapa. This is fine for, say, the Dhammapada, which teaches the transcending of worldly experience - "exercising the utmost restraint, possessing inner delight, composed, solitary, and content". But I swear I'll never read the Old Testament on the chapa. All that smiting and destruction and dashing the little ones against the stones – I'd do murder every morning under that influence.
Having said that, all that Old Testament violence and hatred makes me appreciate what a revolution Jesus must have been. Probably most of us are so familiar with the injunction to love our enemies that it's lost a lot of its power. It must have been flabbergasting to the first-century Jews when they first heard it from that young teacher in the synagogue, after all that smiting they'd previously been taught.
18. Buy one of those gorgeous glass pendants from Ngwenya glass in Swaziland for my mother.
Done, but photographic evidence won't be posted until my mother has seen it.
The other purchase of interest in Swaziland was a bundle of candles from the wonderful Swazi Candles. For item 11, I hope to be in India during Deepavali, which means giving gifts of lights.
37. Go to the Museu da História Natural.
Done. See last week's post for photographic evidence.
45. Find my super payout from DSS.
46. Take care of that other super.
I occasionally need to email a Mozambican government agency – most often the notorious Telecomunições de Moçambique, the carrier that can't explain why it frequently drops our lines for ten minutes at random intervals, and whose técnicos were last year completely unaware that the satellite link between Maputo and Quelimane had been replaced by a fibre optic cable until two months after the event. I don't have a very high opinion of their competence, but they do at least reply to emails – which more than Ausfund or the Australian Department of Human Services have done. Follow-up emails were sent last week.
47. Keep my living expenses to less than 60% of my take-home salary.
Done. Shortly after posting these goals, I did a personal budget for the first time in my life and was pleasantly surprised to discover I was within an ace of this anyway. I trimmed back sufficiently by preparing my own lunches instead of buying a prego no pão (steak sandwich) or frango grelhado (grilled chicken) every day – there isn't much else available, unless you don't mind dobrada (tripe) with your feijão (bean stew). That was before a recent modest pay rise. Some of that rise will go to Dona Luisa the empregada and Sr Micas the guard, and I have to mind the value of the American dollar because I have the infernal inconvenience of paying my rent in dollars even though my salary is in meticais. But I think I'm okay, budget-wise, for the foreseeable future - pela graça do Deus.
50. Clear my wardrobe of clothes I don't wear anymore.
Done. Had Dona Luisa not been defeated by the chapa strike, she would have found a good-sized backpack stuffed with clothes sitting next to the kitchen garbage on Monday morning. She is always far more stylishly dressed than I am so I doubt she'll be adopting any of my cast-offs in a hurry, but most of them are good enough to sell to a second-hand vendor for a bit of extra cash.
52. Get rid of all old papers I don't need anymore.
Done. It's a shame I didn't think of taking a "before" photo, or better still a "during" photo, when paid water bills and boarding passes dating back to 2005 had been sorted into heaps all over the living room floor. It could have been an inspiration to all.
67. Give away all the books on my shelves which annoy me.
There's a new café in town – or, it was new to me; every other foreign female with pretensions to knowing her macchiato from her mocha seems surprised I didn't know – which not only packages its own fair-trade coffee, but which maintains a book exchange. It was entirely English-language when I checked a couple of weeks ago, as I dropped off a couple of unwanted gifts. It will take a few more trips to unclog my shelves completely, but this should be done in a month or two.
The other point I like about this café is that it stands on Rua Beijo da Mulata, a mulata being a woman of mixed race and an a beijo being a kiss. It wouldn't be allowed in Australia.
76. Get involved in the Maputo Professional Women's Network.
I mind the database for this group, but I'll mark this as done after I've participated in (and posted more details about) our first event, which is set for 12 March.
101. Be able to find and name 100 stars.
I'm typing this at 20.00 in my living room on a Sunday night. I was hoping to go out onto my balcony and check that I can remember what I've learned, but the night's come over cloudy, so I'll have to do this from my imagination.
Standing on my living room balcony – facing west by north-west - on a clear night I can look up and see Orion. The red star in the lower right corner is Betelgeuse. Clockwise from there, the other points of the rectangle are Bellatrix, Rigel and Saiph. The leftmost star in Orion's belt is Mintaka. Between Orion and the horizon, the bright reddish star is El Nath, and the sparkler off to its left is Aldebaran, both in Taurus. To the right of El Nath is Castor and Pollux in Gemini. The brightest star in the sky is Sirius, to the right of Orion. Sirius and Betelgeuse make an equilateral triangle with Procyon. Canopus is somewhere above my roof, but I can't check it from here.
From my kitchen balcony I can see the Southern Cross, which is easy, because the three brightest stars are called Acrux (the lowest star on the Australian flag), Becrux (the left arm) and Gacrux (the uppermost star on the flag) – but if you are a poetical snob like me, you can call Becrux Mimosa. Everyone should know Alpha and Beta Centauri if they don't – at least those who reside in the southern hemisphere. More or less on the opposite side of the celestial south pole to Crux, the big sparkler is Achernar.
At this hour of the evening I can't recognise a single star from the balcony of the spare bedroom – facing north by north-east - but when I struggle out of bed at 4.30 in the morning I can see the constellation Scorpio. The red star on the scorpion's back is Antares, the brighter of the two stars in the sting is Shaula, and the fainter of the two is Lesath.
I just checked the above in my star charts. Twenty stars, until I can be sure of Canopus.
The names of stars and constellations are poetry to me, but I'm aware that to many the preceding paragraphs must be the most boring in this post. To them I say: be grateful I'm not giving you a similar account of what I'm learning from item 8, reading Economic Literacy.
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Slimy creepy things and a public commitment
Where does the time go? For the last fortnight the office has been frequently crammed with auditors, who have confirmed my worst suspicions of that breed - they really don't have anything better to do in the evenings than count beans. We usually end up turfing them out around 8pm, but only because we can't leave them in place overnight. They require an unreasonable amount of persuasion to move. In the meantime I've developed the habit of getting up at 4.30 to write before going to work. It makes for long and productive days, but somehow time for blog posts is hard to squeeze in.
This is a public commitment to write something longer over the weekend and post it on Monday. In the meantime, here's a photo of a display at the Museu da História Natural, to prove that I have been doing one or two things from my Rushing Through Life list. The choice of subject matter has nothing to do with auditors.
Late addition: this week, in that brief moment between dropping into bed and dozing off, my reading has been Dark Continent My Black Arse, Sihle Khumalo's account of a Cape-to-Cairo trip by public transport. It's refreshing, informative, extremely politically incorrect, and much more entertaining than Khaled Hosseini's pedestrian and predictable harangue. I've just been over to LibraryThing to update the "What I'm reading" list in the sidebar, and discovered that not one of the numerous libraries on the site - from Amazon.com to the University of Pretoria - lists the book. I'm outraged! Does Zuma know a fellow Zulu is being slighted in this unconscionable fashion? The book is published by a South African imprint of Random House, which one might expect to give it some weight internationally. It makes me wonder which other books the rest of the world might be missing. Hardly surprising the continent should seem dark from outside.
This is a public commitment to write something longer over the weekend and post it on Monday. In the meantime, here's a photo of a display at the Museu da História Natural, to prove that I have been doing one or two things from my Rushing Through Life list. The choice of subject matter has nothing to do with auditors.
Late addition: this week, in that brief moment between dropping into bed and dozing off, my reading has been Dark Continent My Black Arse, Sihle Khumalo's account of a Cape-to-Cairo trip by public transport. It's refreshing, informative, extremely politically incorrect, and much more entertaining than Khaled Hosseini's pedestrian and predictable harangue. I've just been over to LibraryThing to update the "What I'm reading" list in the sidebar, and discovered that not one of the numerous libraries on the site - from Amazon.com to the University of Pretoria - lists the book. I'm outraged! Does Zuma know a fellow Zulu is being slighted in this unconscionable fashion? The book is published by a South African imprint of Random House, which one might expect to give it some weight internationally. It makes me wonder which other books the rest of the world might be missing. Hardly surprising the continent should seem dark from outside.
Saturday, February 09, 2008
Hot day in Malanga
Those who aren't familiar with the usual face of Avenida 24 de Julho outside our office in Bairro de Malanga - crowded with traffic, shoppers and the street vendors' neatly arranged second-hand shoes - may not fully appreciate this photo. Valentin took it from the office window ledge on Tuesday, when the price of a chapa ride increased from five meticais to seven and a half. I could thrill you all with tales of the rubber bullets I dodged, but in fact I spent most of the day at home in bed with a fever and stomach cramps. I crept out for a malaria test around 9.00, when all looked normal in my middle-class part of town. In the clinic's waiting room the local TV news showed interviews with commuters angry about the price increase, but that was to be expected. I received my negative result and crept home.
Around midday Carminda rang to say that if I was thinking of coming in, I should forget it. By that time small mobs had upended rubbish skips and burned tyres to block off main roads, and were throwing stones at any vehicle that defied the blockade. Ambulances weren't exempt, as Valentin shows us.
The stone-throwers weren't just the young underemployed men that one might expect. Wesley reported seeing a car speed into the mob's section of the street when a woman threw the first stone, and a group of children followed suit. The news reports I've read mention groups of schoolchildren, unable to attend classes due to chapas being off the roads, joining in the free-for-all.I saw nothing of this in peaceful, prosperous Bairro de Polana. It felt like a public holiday, with no racket of public transport coming up from the street.
Carminda walked home around 16.30 - it seemed safer than driving, at that stage, and indeed she did make it home without incident, for all the uproar around her. She reports that some true believers in her part of town were stopping vehicles at their makeshift barricades and then allowing them to move on if they paid cash.
The police made a very late appearance on our section of 24 de Julho, and it didn't improve matters. By that time, the crowds seemed to have dispersed, and those of my colleages still at the office judged it safe enough to drive home in a convoy. (The stone-throwers had ignored the cars parked in front of the office. Only moving vehicles drew their ire.) They all went down to the street together, when a truck full of police appeared, apparently with orders to fire rubber bullets at anyone still on the streets. "Grenade-sized" rubber bullets, as Wesley described them, and he has an impressive dent in his car to prove it.
Everyone dived behind the parked cars. Thank God for the presence of mind of a passing motorist who jumped on his brakes so that a group of local children who had ventured out to play could shelter behind his car. After the police truck swerved off to the other end of the street, Trudi took advantage of the lull to shepherd all the children inside the bank building, where they huddled on the stairs and listened to Trudi's Portuguese reassurance while the police returned and swept the pavement with rubber bullets again.
So. The powers that be repealed the price increase - a contentious move, as chapeiras simply don't make a profit at that price (it has remained the same for three years). At the next attempt to raise the price everyone will know how to bring it back down again. From Wednesday onwards, things have been calm, though there have been few chapas on the streets this week - why should there be, if it's not economic for the chapeiras to send them out there? But some arrangement has been arrived at, and today the Maputo streets are their usual crowded, crazy selves.
I suspect this issue may provide more material later. I promise to skip any heroics if stone-throwing women or rubber bullets come anywhere near me. (For now, I am feeling much better, thank you.)
Sunday, January 20, 2008
At Vila de Pescadores
Bringing in the catch at Vila de Pescadores, just north of Maputo, about 6pm yesterday. That's too late for the ladies in the foreground to take their plastic crates of fish to market, so the fish would have spent the night covered in blocks of ice, and appeared in the market first thing this morning.On the horizon is Ilha de Xefina, one of the islands I undertook to circumambulate in my previous post.
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Rushing through life and puzzling my friends
As I seem to be playing to a very small audience here, I feel free to do something possibly embarrassing. ("If no one ever did anything silly, nothing intelligent would ever get done" - Wittgenstein.)
Late last year, in the torpid internet surfing I was doing at the end of each day, after my brain had slowed down too much to do anything safely on the servers but before Chimoio branch managed to get its tills closed (Dona Fernanda at Chimoio is a notoriously slow and careful counter of cash, and pre-Christmas is as busy for us as it is for anyone else) - I ran across the internet meme of 101 things in 1001 days.
This notion had me very much in two minds. Looking through a random sampling of other people's lists, I marvelled at the seeming trivia which filled so many people's hopes and dreams. At the same time, my own list of seeming trivia simply wrote itself. The time and energy I put into writing a novel must surely mystify aspiring sky-divers or hair-dyers as much as their passions mystify me.
There's no doubt that writing and publicising a list such as this greatly improves the chances of the items on it being accomplished. Already I've spoken to friends about a weekend trip to Quissico, which I probably wouldn't have done if I hadn't been thinking about places I wanted to include on my list. The other reason to post the list here is that I can use it to post here a bit more regularly. Adventures in getting a necklace made (of which more later) probably wouldn't have blipped my blogging horizon without a prior mention here.
Having said that, I've been here long enough to appreciate the farcical aspect of this - hence the title of this post. This list has brought home to me how completely exotic an animal I am in the Mozambican environment. Nothing about children, for a start, but that's merely the tip of the iceberg. There's arrogance and peril in making such demands from life - which I attempt to defuse with the very Mozambican phrase at the end of my list.
But perhaps it's the sheer lack of practicality in so much of this that is most bewildering. I imagine my Mozambican friends and colleagues reading the list and thinking, what's so special about the waterfall at Namaacha? You can get just as wet in the swimming pool at Hotel Cardoso, and they bring you drinks there. Why do you want a walking safari when it's so much safer and more comfortable in a vehicle? A trip to Bhutan is over in a month. Why don't you buy a nice car that'll last for years?
Why not, indeed? A week's accommodation in Maputo, close to restaurants and transport, for anyone who can give me a good answer.
Then there's de-cluttering, a completely foreign concept, but I'll save that for later.
In fact almost the entire list turns out to be Mozambican-themed, sometimes in subtle ways. Item 9, for example, is a challenge because internet-based bookstores don't accept my Mozambican-issued credit cards. I'm going to have to ask around to find the best way of disposing of the old medicines mentioned in item 51, given the way my garbage gets picked over at every step of the disposal process. As for item 81, yes, Mozambique is a place where you can get to middle management of a bank without ever wearing a suit.
I hemmed and hawed about the absence of less trivial goals - like being a better friend, say - but after some thought realised that much is embedded in the trivia. I can't travel on my own to all those Mozambican locations, for example; most of them require wheels, which means organising trips with friends and making myself a desirable travelling companion.
The office crept in at point 88, but this is otherwise a leisure-time list. There are a sight more than 101 things to do at work, and most of the more exciting ones are confidential. I will mention my over-arching workplace resolution, CULTIVATE EQUANIMITY.
I'll explain all those exotic place names when I post about being there, but a few other items may need quick explanation:
12 and 13 - I'll have to write this list and post it, so that those who plan to visit me can make their choices.
35 and 36 - alfaiaterias are tailors or dressmakers - or (now that I've checked the dictionary) possibly the shops in which they ply their trade. These items, like the other de-cluttering items and reading the Portuguese-language novels listed from 56 to 59, are tasks which I've been meaning to do for years.
37 to 40 - I come to the embarrassing admission that I've lived in Maputo for five years without having visited any of these. I did once go to a buffet lunch in the gardens of the Museu da História Natural.
Item 100 - I thought of censoring this out of fear for my father's health. Please be assured that the mattress strayed because of my misanthropy, not the opposite reason. I sleep on my landlady's mattress, which is better quality, anyway.
I first put the list in the sidebar - and it may yet go back there - but right now the thought of being confronted by it every week when I post has me intimidated. The sidebar is so damnably permanent and judgemental. I'm printing it out and sticking it to my kitchen wall for my own reference, but I post it here as a temporary thing, invisible to the rest of you after a month. If it serves no other purpose it shows what was important to me back in January 2008.
1. Finish drafting and revising City In Spate and start sending it to publishers or agents.
2. Finish drafting Azeviche.
3. Finish drafting Snake.
4. Send drafted chapters to Beck and Luanda Laura.
5. [Censored]
6. Read the Bible, other than 1 Chronicles and Psalms.
7. Read the Koran.
8. Read Economic Literacy. Argue with Valentin about anything I don’t understand. Argue with Valentin about anything I do understand. Cook him breakfasts to make up for the arguing.
9. Buy and read The Healing Hand by Guido Majno and Admiral Rogers’ book on galley warfare.
10. Visit Luanda Laura's cottage in Bulgaria.
11. Visit Bhutan with Minati.
12. Visit a place from my “interesting places in Africa outside Mozambique and South Africa” list.
13. Visit another place from my “interesting places in Africa outside Mozambique and South Africa” list.
14. Walk down Table Mountain.
15. Wine tasting in Stellenbosch.
16. Walk in the Drakensberg.
17. Caving in Swaziland.
18. Buy one of those gorgeous glass pendants from Ngwenya glass in Swaziland for my mother.
19. Visit my family in Australia.
20. Walk up Mount Gorongosa.
21. Sail in the Quirimbas.
22. Walk around Ilha de Moçambique.
23. Watch a sunrise over the Cahora Bassa lake.
24. Walk in the Manica escarpment.
25. Walk in the Parque Nacional de Limpopo.
26. Spend the night in Quissico.
27. Spend a weekend revising my MS at that place on the sandspit opposite Marracuene recommended by American Laura.
28. Circumambulate Inhaca.
29. Circumambulate Xefina.
30. Get wet in the waterfall at Namaacha.
31. Visit Minati’s project.
32. A walking safari.
33. Bookshelves.
34. Curtains.
35. Get six shirts made by an alfaiateria.
36. Get that cloth bag from Melbourne copied by an alfaiateria – at least three times, so I can fearlessly wear two of them to shreds.
37. Go to the Museu da História Natural.
38. Go to the Museu da Revolução.
39. Go to the Museu da Geologica.
40. Go to the Museu de Moedas.
41. Go to the latin dance classes.
42. Chapa research – take the chapa to the end of the line, just to see where it goes. Do this with the Malhazine, Zona Verde, Benfica and Drive-In lines (the lines that take me to the office every day, but I hop off at Malanga).
43. Do twenty pushups in a row.
44. Skip rope 100 times in a row.
45. Find my super payout from DSS.
46. Take care of that other super.
47. Keep my living expenses to less than 60% of my take-home salary.
48. Find a way to put 10% of my take-home salary into my nest egg.
49. Put another 10% of my take-home salary into long-term savings.
50. Clear my wardrobe of clothes I don't wear anymore.
51. Get rid of the old medicines and cosmetics.
52. Get rid of all old papers I don't need anymore. Don’t keep more than the batik-covered box full of papers. Burn or shred unnecessary papers regularly.
53. Buy two of those much-praised bedspreads from that project here in Maputo.
54. Learn enough about electricity to understand what happened when all that hardware fried at Sede.
55. Write up the conjugations for fifty useful Portuguese verbs and post them in the kitchen (not all fifty at once). Learn them. Use them.
56. Read Harry Potter e a Pedra Filosofal.
57. Read Rosa Xintimane.
58. Read Neighbours.
59. Read Vinte e Zinco.
60. Read volume one of UEM’s history of Mozambique.
61. Get back in touch with Eric and Cindy.
62. Legalise my music.
63. Post something to PostSecret.
64. Post a review of Mavelane Airport on www.sleepinginairports.com.
65. Post comments on twenty blogs that have helped me, expressing my appreciation.
66. Install Linux on Delilah.
67. Give away all the books on my shelves which annoy me.
68. Frame the old map of Mozambique American Laura gave me.
69. Find a way to put my postcards on my kitchen wall without them curling up and falling off.
70. Find a way to print my digital photos such that I’m satisfied with the results. Print photos for my kitchen wall.
71. Give chickens and soft drinks to the guards on Christmas and New Year's Eve.
72. Cook a tranquil dinner for tranquil friends on New Year’s Eve.
73. Act in a public production by the Maputo Players.
74. Write or adapt a piece for performance at the Maputo Players.
75. Host a Maputo Players meeting.
76. Get involved in the Maputo Professional Women's Network.
77. Borrow a sewing machine and turn the black fish capulana into cushion covers. Turn batiks into cushion covers. Convince the batik vendors that I really don’t want to buy any more batiks after that.
78. Make the apartment's dining table and chairs go with my furniture.
79. Make a necklace out of one of the mother-and-child earrings which I don’t wear because they’re too heavy.
80. Make a will.
81. Buy two suits and a dress suitable for formal dinners.
82. The 21-day no-complaint experiment.
83. The 21-day no-fidgeting experiment.
84. The 21-day no-monotone experiment.
85. The 21-day no-passive-aggressive-attitude experiment.
86. The 21-day no-envy experiment.
87. The 21-day no-worrying-about-what-other-people-think-of-me experiment.
88. Empty my work and personal Inboxes.
89. [Censored]
90. [Censored]
91. [Censored]
92. Buy decent field guides to southern African birds and southern African trees.
93. Buy a pair of binoculars.
94. Hem those two dresses which have been rolled up in my sewing kit for years.
95. Handle a snake.
96. Let a spider crawl over me.
97. One outing with the ladies-of-leisure early-morning bird-watching group.
98. Figure out a recipe for Amarula fudge.
99. Put up mosquito nets in both bedrooms.
100. Get my mattress back from wherever it is. Buy some decent pillows and blankets.
101. Be able to find and name 100 stars.
PELA GRAÇA DO DEUS
Late last year, in the torpid internet surfing I was doing at the end of each day, after my brain had slowed down too much to do anything safely on the servers but before Chimoio branch managed to get its tills closed (Dona Fernanda at Chimoio is a notoriously slow and careful counter of cash, and pre-Christmas is as busy for us as it is for anyone else) - I ran across the internet meme of 101 things in 1001 days.
This notion had me very much in two minds. Looking through a random sampling of other people's lists, I marvelled at the seeming trivia which filled so many people's hopes and dreams. At the same time, my own list of seeming trivia simply wrote itself. The time and energy I put into writing a novel must surely mystify aspiring sky-divers or hair-dyers as much as their passions mystify me.
There's no doubt that writing and publicising a list such as this greatly improves the chances of the items on it being accomplished. Already I've spoken to friends about a weekend trip to Quissico, which I probably wouldn't have done if I hadn't been thinking about places I wanted to include on my list. The other reason to post the list here is that I can use it to post here a bit more regularly. Adventures in getting a necklace made (of which more later) probably wouldn't have blipped my blogging horizon without a prior mention here.
Having said that, I've been here long enough to appreciate the farcical aspect of this - hence the title of this post. This list has brought home to me how completely exotic an animal I am in the Mozambican environment. Nothing about children, for a start, but that's merely the tip of the iceberg. There's arrogance and peril in making such demands from life - which I attempt to defuse with the very Mozambican phrase at the end of my list.
But perhaps it's the sheer lack of practicality in so much of this that is most bewildering. I imagine my Mozambican friends and colleagues reading the list and thinking, what's so special about the waterfall at Namaacha? You can get just as wet in the swimming pool at Hotel Cardoso, and they bring you drinks there. Why do you want a walking safari when it's so much safer and more comfortable in a vehicle? A trip to Bhutan is over in a month. Why don't you buy a nice car that'll last for years?
Why not, indeed? A week's accommodation in Maputo, close to restaurants and transport, for anyone who can give me a good answer.
Then there's de-cluttering, a completely foreign concept, but I'll save that for later.
In fact almost the entire list turns out to be Mozambican-themed, sometimes in subtle ways. Item 9, for example, is a challenge because internet-based bookstores don't accept my Mozambican-issued credit cards. I'm going to have to ask around to find the best way of disposing of the old medicines mentioned in item 51, given the way my garbage gets picked over at every step of the disposal process. As for item 81, yes, Mozambique is a place where you can get to middle management of a bank without ever wearing a suit.
I hemmed and hawed about the absence of less trivial goals - like being a better friend, say - but after some thought realised that much is embedded in the trivia. I can't travel on my own to all those Mozambican locations, for example; most of them require wheels, which means organising trips with friends and making myself a desirable travelling companion.
The office crept in at point 88, but this is otherwise a leisure-time list. There are a sight more than 101 things to do at work, and most of the more exciting ones are confidential. I will mention my over-arching workplace resolution, CULTIVATE EQUANIMITY.
I'll explain all those exotic place names when I post about being there, but a few other items may need quick explanation:
12 and 13 - I'll have to write this list and post it, so that those who plan to visit me can make their choices.
35 and 36 - alfaiaterias are tailors or dressmakers - or (now that I've checked the dictionary) possibly the shops in which they ply their trade. These items, like the other de-cluttering items and reading the Portuguese-language novels listed from 56 to 59, are tasks which I've been meaning to do for years.
37 to 40 - I come to the embarrassing admission that I've lived in Maputo for five years without having visited any of these. I did once go to a buffet lunch in the gardens of the Museu da História Natural.
Item 100 - I thought of censoring this out of fear for my father's health. Please be assured that the mattress strayed because of my misanthropy, not the opposite reason. I sleep on my landlady's mattress, which is better quality, anyway.
I first put the list in the sidebar - and it may yet go back there - but right now the thought of being confronted by it every week when I post has me intimidated. The sidebar is so damnably permanent and judgemental. I'm printing it out and sticking it to my kitchen wall for my own reference, but I post it here as a temporary thing, invisible to the rest of you after a month. If it serves no other purpose it shows what was important to me back in January 2008.
1. Finish drafting and revising City In Spate and start sending it to publishers or agents.
2. Finish drafting Azeviche.
3. Finish drafting Snake.
4. Send drafted chapters to Beck and Luanda Laura.
5. [Censored]
6. Read the Bible, other than 1 Chronicles and Psalms.
7. Read the Koran.
8. Read Economic Literacy. Argue with Valentin about anything I don’t understand. Argue with Valentin about anything I do understand. Cook him breakfasts to make up for the arguing.
9. Buy and read The Healing Hand by Guido Majno and Admiral Rogers’ book on galley warfare.
10. Visit Luanda Laura's cottage in Bulgaria.
11. Visit Bhutan with Minati.
12. Visit a place from my “interesting places in Africa outside Mozambique and South Africa” list.
13. Visit another place from my “interesting places in Africa outside Mozambique and South Africa” list.
14. Walk down Table Mountain.
15. Wine tasting in Stellenbosch.
16. Walk in the Drakensberg.
17. Caving in Swaziland.
18. Buy one of those gorgeous glass pendants from Ngwenya glass in Swaziland for my mother.
19. Visit my family in Australia.
20. Walk up Mount Gorongosa.
21. Sail in the Quirimbas.
22. Walk around Ilha de Moçambique.
23. Watch a sunrise over the Cahora Bassa lake.
24. Walk in the Manica escarpment.
25. Walk in the Parque Nacional de Limpopo.
26. Spend the night in Quissico.
27. Spend a weekend revising my MS at that place on the sandspit opposite Marracuene recommended by American Laura.
28. Circumambulate Inhaca.
29. Circumambulate Xefina.
30. Get wet in the waterfall at Namaacha.
31. Visit Minati’s project.
32. A walking safari.
33. Bookshelves.
34. Curtains.
35. Get six shirts made by an alfaiateria.
36. Get that cloth bag from Melbourne copied by an alfaiateria – at least three times, so I can fearlessly wear two of them to shreds.
37. Go to the Museu da História Natural.
38. Go to the Museu da Revolução.
39. Go to the Museu da Geologica.
40. Go to the Museu de Moedas.
41. Go to the latin dance classes.
42. Chapa research – take the chapa to the end of the line, just to see where it goes. Do this with the Malhazine, Zona Verde, Benfica and Drive-In lines (the lines that take me to the office every day, but I hop off at Malanga).
43. Do twenty pushups in a row.
44. Skip rope 100 times in a row.
45. Find my super payout from DSS.
46. Take care of that other super.
47. Keep my living expenses to less than 60% of my take-home salary.
48. Find a way to put 10% of my take-home salary into my nest egg.
49. Put another 10% of my take-home salary into long-term savings.
50. Clear my wardrobe of clothes I don't wear anymore.
51. Get rid of the old medicines and cosmetics.
52. Get rid of all old papers I don't need anymore. Don’t keep more than the batik-covered box full of papers. Burn or shred unnecessary papers regularly.
53. Buy two of those much-praised bedspreads from that project here in Maputo.
54. Learn enough about electricity to understand what happened when all that hardware fried at Sede.
55. Write up the conjugations for fifty useful Portuguese verbs and post them in the kitchen (not all fifty at once). Learn them. Use them.
56. Read Harry Potter e a Pedra Filosofal.
57. Read Rosa Xintimane.
58. Read Neighbours.
59. Read Vinte e Zinco.
60. Read volume one of UEM’s history of Mozambique.
61. Get back in touch with Eric and Cindy.
62. Legalise my music.
63. Post something to PostSecret.
64. Post a review of Mavelane Airport on www.sleepinginairports.com.
65. Post comments on twenty blogs that have helped me, expressing my appreciation.
66. Install Linux on Delilah.
67. Give away all the books on my shelves which annoy me.
68. Frame the old map of Mozambique American Laura gave me.
69. Find a way to put my postcards on my kitchen wall without them curling up and falling off.
70. Find a way to print my digital photos such that I’m satisfied with the results. Print photos for my kitchen wall.
71. Give chickens and soft drinks to the guards on Christmas and New Year's Eve.
72. Cook a tranquil dinner for tranquil friends on New Year’s Eve.
73. Act in a public production by the Maputo Players.
74. Write or adapt a piece for performance at the Maputo Players.
75. Host a Maputo Players meeting.
76. Get involved in the Maputo Professional Women's Network.
77. Borrow a sewing machine and turn the black fish capulana into cushion covers. Turn batiks into cushion covers. Convince the batik vendors that I really don’t want to buy any more batiks after that.
78. Make the apartment's dining table and chairs go with my furniture.
79. Make a necklace out of one of the mother-and-child earrings which I don’t wear because they’re too heavy.
80. Make a will.
81. Buy two suits and a dress suitable for formal dinners.
82. The 21-day no-complaint experiment.
83. The 21-day no-fidgeting experiment.
84. The 21-day no-monotone experiment.
85. The 21-day no-passive-aggressive-attitude experiment.
86. The 21-day no-envy experiment.
87. The 21-day no-worrying-about-what-other-people-think-of-me experiment.
88. Empty my work and personal Inboxes.
89. [Censored]
90. [Censored]
91. [Censored]
92. Buy decent field guides to southern African birds and southern African trees.
93. Buy a pair of binoculars.
94. Hem those two dresses which have been rolled up in my sewing kit for years.
95. Handle a snake.
96. Let a spider crawl over me.
97. One outing with the ladies-of-leisure early-morning bird-watching group.
98. Figure out a recipe for Amarula fudge.
99. Put up mosquito nets in both bedrooms.
100. Get my mattress back from wherever it is. Buy some decent pillows and blankets.
101. Be able to find and name 100 stars.
PELA GRAÇA DO DEUS
Saturday, January 05, 2008
Retorno tímido ao trabalho
"Timid return to work" was a front-page headline in Notícias yesterday. Our placid daily got three columns out of chapa drivers and market vendors recovering slowly from the break. That was the second story, just below the news of rising floodwaters in central Mozambique. I'm having trouble establishing the details: Zimbabwean media reports two deaths in Mozambique, but the local sources say nothing about it.
Once again I managed to evade the responsibility of office devotions - phone calls from users unable to print or unsure about their start-of-year reports ambushed me on cue. No one seemed to miss it. Most likely it felt too much like Monday for a proper devotional meeting, or perhaps everyone was just feeling timid. I had prepared a piece about new year's resolutions, which aren't done here, so it was a kind of show-and-tell about my exotic foreign culture.
Having arrived early, though, I checked the internet news (my only source these days) and saw what was happening in Kenya - specifically in Kisumu, where our sister bank is located. Sophie and Erick in this photo live there - for those who have been following the issues, Sophie is Kikuyu and Erick is Luo. The helpdesk calls interrupted me while I was hastily taking notes and trying to compose suitable messages of peace and hope.
I've sent a message to Sophie (whom I know best of my colleagues there) to find out what is going on, but so far no reply. It's very likely that the bank is closed until the situation calms down.
I don't want to diminish the enormity of what's happening there - though it isn't genocide, as anyone who knows anything about Rwanda or Darfur can tell you, and the sooner the leaders involved stop making such inflammatory statements, the sooner we will all be out of this. But I do want to call attention to an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal pointing out the difference between the violence in Kenya now and kind of violence that has afflicted African countries so much in the past (the article requires subscription, so here is the section I want noted):
This is not the kind of government-sponsored violence, shoring up those in power, which we have seen in the past. As misguided as it is, it is protest violence, and the message is that the President of Kenya cannot rig an election with impunity.
Once again I managed to evade the responsibility of office devotions - phone calls from users unable to print or unsure about their start-of-year reports ambushed me on cue. No one seemed to miss it. Most likely it felt too much like Monday for a proper devotional meeting, or perhaps everyone was just feeling timid. I had prepared a piece about new year's resolutions, which aren't done here, so it was a kind of show-and-tell about my exotic foreign culture.
Having arrived early, though, I checked the internet news (my only source these days) and saw what was happening in Kenya - specifically in Kisumu, where our sister bank is located. Sophie and Erick in this photo live there - for those who have been following the issues, Sophie is Kikuyu and Erick is Luo. The helpdesk calls interrupted me while I was hastily taking notes and trying to compose suitable messages of peace and hope.
I've sent a message to Sophie (whom I know best of my colleagues there) to find out what is going on, but so far no reply. It's very likely that the bank is closed until the situation calms down.
I don't want to diminish the enormity of what's happening there - though it isn't genocide, as anyone who knows anything about Rwanda or Darfur can tell you, and the sooner the leaders involved stop making such inflammatory statements, the sooner we will all be out of this. But I do want to call attention to an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal pointing out the difference between the violence in Kenya now and kind of violence that has afflicted African countries so much in the past (the article requires subscription, so here is the section I want noted):
Ten years ago, bolstering a candidate's results by a few percentage points would have been no big thing. In fact, 20 years ago, an 85% result for the incumbent would have been de rigueur. Today, there are more stringent regulations; more Kenyans know their rights; more monitors were at the polls; Kenya's media coverage was extensive; digital media are accelerating the distribution of information; and many people have cellphones with which they can pass on information.
This is not the kind of government-sponsored violence, shoring up those in power, which we have seen in the past. As misguided as it is, it is protest violence, and the message is that the President of Kenya cannot rig an election with impunity.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
