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.

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.