A happier contributor to the silence was my three weeks' leave in December, spent with my family in Australia, and including my first family Christmas since 2001 (just before I left for Mozambique). I'd hoped to catch up on blogging then, but found myself inexplicably avoiding computers.
You know you're back in Mozambique when your third-floor bedroom gets flooded. It had rained solidly for four days before my return home, and the drainage channel from a balcony became blocked. It's no great issue to sleep on sofa cushions for a week while the mattress slowly dries out in the humidity; what's truly annoying is the effect on my beautiful Portuguese parquetry floor.
These floors are found all over Mozambique, but their maintenance is quite a specialised art, and there's no word so far on when the artist will be available for repairs. I imagine he's pretty busy after those four days.
The cat is a reminder that I must not complain about the small inconveniences in my life. She belongs to an American friend who has lived in Mozambique for years, with a Mozambican boyfriend and their two small children, most recently in a flat with sunrise views over the Baia de Maputo, and whose extensive Mozambican experience had landed her a nice contract with a UN agency. Late last year the UN cancelled her contract due to funding cuts, her landlord informed her he would require the flat after Christmas, and the boyfriend - this is no place for details, but he's removed himself from the picture. So my friend has taken her two children for an indefinite stay with her family in the United States. The least I could to help smooth her hasty departure was to take the cat off her hands.
To those of my Maputo friends who read this blog - the cat is looking for another home. She's accustomed to a flat full of children and empregadas and visiting friends, and staying alone in my minimalist flat all day is making her neurotic.
3 comments:
I hope the cat is friendly. Sorry about your floor but it's good to see a post.
love from the PC
So there IS life on Mars! Good to see the blog is active again. 'Ouch' for the floor - looks as though it needs a zipper.
Have been meaning to let you know that I enjoyed the book, Dark Continent my Black Arse, although I often winced at the sexism. At least it reminded me of how far we in the West have come in the past two or three decades! For the sake of African women, I hope they catch up soon. I have just begun The Last Flight of the Flamingo, and am also enjoying the (very different) humour in that.
It's no doubt too late to help as you puzzle over the references in The Last Flight of the Flamingo, but here's some background.
The peace agreement which ended the post-independence war of destabilisation in 1992 was signed in Rome, and Italian soldiers formed the backbone of the peacekeeping force. There was a "Little Italy" at Xai-Xai (Dad may remember this town on the Limpopo, about three hours' drive north of Maputo). I hear all the local women loved this place because they could earn so much money there - and I don't mean by cleaning the rooms.
In the meantime, back in Maputo, young Valentin and his family were living in an apartment below that of an Italian officer. On the long summer evenings Valentin would sit in his bedroom with the windows wide open, doing his homework. His father would wander in and say, "You know you can do that in the living room?" Valentin would reply that he was fine where he was. "Studying the theory, are you?" responded his father, wandering out.
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