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.

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.

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.)