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DCDukie
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Name: DCDukie
Country: United States
State: California
Metro: Palo Alto
Birthday: 1/14/1981
Interests: -> worshipping the King!
-> reading
-> skiing
-> travel
-> running
Occupation: Graduate Student
Industry: Bidness
Message: message me
Member Since:
1/7/2003
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| I thought it would be appropriate to write a few of the things that have been occupying my thoughts likely; namely, what things about this place will I miss when I'm gone, and what will be happy to be rid of?
Things that I won't miss when I leave Mozambique
The crappiest cell phone service in the world - Mcel makes Sprint and Verizon look like model service providers. My phone inexplicably quit sending text messages three weeks ago, which, given the expensive calling rates in this place, makes life here much more expensive. I can still receive text messages, but can't send them. It's infuriating, and what makes it worse is that the incompetent people in the Mcel shop in town have no clue what's wrong with my phone, telling me - with a shrug and a clueless look - things that are obviously wrong and spoken with no conviction at all (e.g. the phone is broken, when everybody knows darn well it's a problem with either the sim card or the service itself). And that's when it works. I get the "network busy" message so often lately that it drives me nuts. I can't make calls, I can't send texts, my phone is useless and I am without communication.
Plastic cheese - The cheese here just sucks, that's all there is to say about it. It all looks exactly like processed "American" cheese, even the "cheddar." I never realized before how much I would miss cheese when the only thing I get is a block of plasticene goo that looks something like cheese but tastes either bad or has no taste at all. Sweet chedder, sweet blue cheese, how do I miss thee!
Restaurants that don't have half the things on the menu - "Tem quiejo azul? No temos... Tem arroz de coco? No temos... Tem bife de casa? No temos" Then why is it called the HOUSE BEEF?!? You don't have it?! What the heck! It's almost comical here how often the restaurants stock out of key ingredients... like CHICKEN! Or BEEF! Almost comical, that is, until you try ordering three different things in a row and they're out of all of them, and you realize you're going to be stuck with the same meal you ate yesterday.
Horrible service in restaurants and other retail establishments - To call waiters in Mozambique "bad" is an understatement; most are depressingly sullen, wildly inattentive, and generally just piss-poor at doing their jobs. I've realized now why tipping exists and how well it serves to incentivize servers. I nearly always ask for the bill when I get my food or the first time I have to ask the server for something after the food comes, because once the food gets delivered, the server often forgets to come back for a LOOOONG time. I think they expect everyone to hang out for an extra hour after the food is gone. Is your water glass empty? Forget about it, better wave your hand around, because it's not like this dude will ever notice.
People asking me for money everywhere I go - This gets old really fast... I know that I'm unbelievably wealthy compared to most people here; this fact should and does humble me. But the level to which it's obvious to me that many people here look at me as nothing more than a walking ATM machine has done many than any single other factor to deter my compassion for the poor. I know that's mean of me, but I can't help it. No one likes to be objectified.
Being called "patrao" (pronounced like a very nasal, throaty "patron," as in the tequila) - This is related to the last one but is well-deserving of its own entry. Seriously, folks, who thought it would be a good idea to teach every poor kid in Mozambique that approaching every white person who walks by with "patrao, patrao!" will get them a handout. Hey you Portuguese colonists, was this your idea? Remind me to smack you around next time I come to your country. It makes me cringe to be called patron by these pitiful little kids! Talk about reminders of imperialism!
Flies - The mosquitoes are bad, but at least they mostly only come out at night. The flies, on the other hand, show up in flocks anytime there's food around outdoors, which is most of the time, since most restaurants here are without air conditioning and steaming hot as a result. One or two flies buzzing around the outdoor patio is bad; having six or eight walking over your table at any given moment is downright disgusting, but it happens all the time. Ew!
Expensive stuff / services - relative to other developing-world destinations I've been in, Mozambique is ridiculously expensive. Spend twenty dollars in Vietnam, Morocco, or Peru, and you can have a plain but clean hotel room with air conditioner and your own bathroom. Not in Mozambique! Here, you might pay $40+ and still wind up sleeping in a dirty, dusty, mosquito-ridden hovel. Less than $30 per night? Forget about it, I wouldn't even try it... The same goes for basic staples. Anything that requires any kind of processing is really expensive in Pemba ($13 for two small boxes of granola from the local market... $6 for a 1-quart box of milk). This is mostly because the transportation infrastructure here is so bad that it pushes up the price of anything that has to be imported, which accounts for... darn near everything!
Dust - Everywhere, on everything, and because I always wear shorts and sandals, always coating my feet. Maybe it's different in the wet season, but my guess is that then all the mud just turns to dust, which is probably worse...
Frequent power / water / vital services outages - This goes without saying, but when power or water goes out for hours at a time, it gets highly annoying. Internet connections are also not only hard to come by, but highly unreliable when you find them.
Corruption - The feeling of being at the mercy of a corrupt official is something that I will never forget, and yet it happens all the time here. Anecdotal evidence would suggest that most police and many business people regularly solicit bribes when they have a chance to do so, and the dead-weight loss in the economy is sad. When jobs go to those who can best afford to pay a bribe rather than to the best-qualified candidates, when police turn their backs on petty crime and hassle law-abiding and well-meaning citizens or travelers, one of the most basic systems that makes society work has stopped being an enabling thing and has become an impediment. This is a sad and frustrating thing.
Things that I'll miss
Brandon, Dominique, Estefano, Kilene, JInyoung, and the rest of the super-cool people I've met and befriended here... There's so much to say about this, but it's truly been a miraculous blessing from God that I met and got involved with such a great group of people here in such a short time. I met some old friends and made some new ones that I think will actually last. What more can anyone hope for when staying only a few months in a place?
The interesting people I meet here - The NGO and missionary communities here (they don't really mix that much that I can see, which is a topic worthy of its own posting at a later date) are full of the most interesting and eclectic people around. Especially the NGO folks are just so ridiculously adventurous and out on the bleeding edge that it amazes me. They will go anywhere, do anything, eat anything, live in just about any conditions, and do it for years on end... It's awe-inspiring, really, as a lover of travel and seeing new places, to see so many people who are obviously totally addicted to this lifestyle at a level that I can't even comprehend.
The cutest kids ever waving to me with those gorgeous smiles whenever I pass by in a car or on my motorbike - I just have to wave back; I know it's dumb and possibly patronizing, but the kids are so CUTE! As a corollary, I would add the thumbs-up sign. If the "v for victory" / "peace sign" is the universal gesture of goodwill in Asia, the corresponding gesture in Africa is surely the thumbs-up. Everywhere I go, the thumbs up accompanied by a big smile cheers me up. So innocent and cheerful, not asking for anything... Or maybe they all want a ride...?
My motorbike - Holy cow, am I ever going to miss my motorbike. Did I have a hard day at work? Stressful day in the office? Cell phone not working? Power gone out for six hours again? Instant solution: get on the motorbike and go for a beachside cruise, wind in my hair, sun on my face... I'm currently trying to find a place to park my car in SF, and find myself wishing that I had a motorbike there instead of a car. So convenient. The motorbike was de-romanticized a little bit when I drove it 1000+ km in five days last week and was sick of being on the thing, but all in all I think it's a totally fabulous means of transportation.
Beautiful Pemba coastline - The drive to work is along one of the more picturesque stretches of beach I've had the pleasure to live near... Of course, you don't want to go to close, most of the beachfront real estate also doubling as a giant outdoor toilet for the plumbing-less denizens of Pemba, but it sure is nice to drive by!
Cheap, fresh seafood - Pemba being right by the ocean, and the profit-maximizing sense of most people here being relatively low, it is possible to get cheap, fresh shrimp, fish, squid, and often lobster here for a fraction of what you would pay in the US. Sweet! Love it!
Being reminded daily about the enormous privilege it is to live and have grown up in a country that is, by any standards, one of the safest, most prosperous, fairest and most merit-driven societies in the world - So many things about Mozambique remind me of things in America that I love; everything from the simple comforts of home; to the efficiencies of having a market-driven economy - even with its sometimes-ruthless pursuit of profit; to having a law enforcement regime that can usually be trusted to actually protect and preserve the citizenry instead of rip them off; to having good roads and power grids and telecom systems. Looking at the outcomes of all those systems, I marvel that we have a system that provides so much for so many. Despite its shortcomings, it certainly does make for a more comfortable life than the average person here lives, and I'm thankful for that.
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| On Sunday morning, after a breakfast and feedback session with my boss/coworker M at the Pemba Beach Hotel (best breakfast in town! Only $20!), I got on my motorbike, an extra 5 liter jug of gasoline strapped to the back, and headed south, Ilha-bound.
I left Pemba at about 8:20 AM, nervous already because I had no idea the trip would take, and didn't want to be traveling after dark. I believed that Ilha was about 500 km away, and given that the fastest I'd ever ridden on my bike was about 70 km/hr up to that point, I figured I had an 8-plus hour trip ahead of me. The sun sets at about 5 PM right now, so I kicked the bike into high gear and decided to see what she could do.
Driving through the bush in Mozambique is a fascinating experience, and for the first time I understand what a truly rural country this is. In my entire trip, there were almost constantly people walking along the side of the road, and most of the time I was driving by the mud-thatch huts that are the housing for 90+% of the people here. There are few cars, and I often wonder to myself, as I am passing these people walking, often with large burdens balanced on top of their heads, how far they have left to go, where they have come from, and to which destination they are going.
The road leading West out of Pemba is a great road by Mozambican standards, with few potholes, and I was pushing the bike, hitting 80 km/hr for the first time ever, then 85, and pushing close to 90 at times. At some point on this stretch, I remembered two things that made me nervous. The first was that I had forgotten my Lonely Planet guide, which contains the only map I have. I had been over my route many times and had a fairly solid knowledge of the geography of the Northern provinces, but I knew that now, if I got lost, I would have to resort to using my weaksauce Portuguese to find my way. It didn't worry me too much, though, not having a map. After all, there are basically only two or three cities in each one that show up on a country-scale map, and they are connected by the one or two roads in each provinces that are paved. The major roads are well-marked, and it shouldn't be hard to find my way. The second thing that worried me is that I had only a small 0.5 liter bottle of water with me (my trusty Nalgene). When leaving Pemba, I had stopped by my hotel to buy some water, but the guy at the desk didn't have change for my 500 metical note, so I was unable to buy. Bummer.
No change. This is something that happens ALL THE TIME in Moz. Even in the stores, you often find that they don't have change, sometimes even for a 100 or 200 note. It's incredibly frustrating, and it's just one more of the small wrenches that get thrown into the wheels of a market economy all the time. Usually what happens, if you're determined to make the purchase, is that the merchant will try to give you "change" in some non-monetary currency. For instance, my coworker L recently was offered change in Mentos. "I don't WANT Mentos," she protested, "I want my ten meticais!" Mentos it was. "Mentos... the change-maker!" I joked, laughing, when she told me the story later.
One hundred kilometers passed without incident, the early morning miles burned up underneath my tires, and I came into the village of Metoro, where a sign told me to turn south towards Nampula. Southward I turned, and before long I was really in the middle of nowhere. This was when I started to get a little bit nervous. The bike seemed to be fine, but after a while it struck me that now I was nearly 200 km from Pemba, from the nearest hospital, from any reliable water source (although I do have a first aid kit and a water filter in my backpack). If the bike were to break down, I would have a long walk / hitch ahead of me, followed by the ordeal of getting the bike repaired in a country that - outside of big cities like Nampula or Maputo - is without any spare parts beyond simple screws and fasteners.
I was truly in the middle of nowhere now, and seeing fewer people than I had at any point along the way, and I was nervous. And yet, this feeling of being out on the edge, the edge where if I slipped I might actually be in some real danger, I've realized that this is what drives me to do things like this. (Parenthetical note: even the Mozambicans' eyebrows go up when they hear that I'm going Pemba to Ilha on a motorbike... sorry Mom)
At about 11 AM, just after Chiure, the only town other than Metoro and Pemba that I would pass through before leaving Cabo Delgado province, I came across the first gas station I had seen, and stopped to refuel before crossing the river into Nampula province.
Crossing the river (via bridge, of course) was pretty cool. It being a very hot day, and much of the country being without running water, hundreds of people were clustered all over the banks and rocks in the river, bathing, swimming, doing laundry and generally enjoying water, something which we in America take for granted most days, but which is a precious resource almost anywhere outside the major cities here.
But I was in a hurry and drove onward without stopping for even a picture (sorry, I should have...) Soon, I began to see the large rock protuberances that I'd seen from the Nampula airport. Inselberg mountains, the South Africans call them, and they are really cool-looking. A lot like Stone Mountain, although not so big. I can't conceive of what geological force would have caused such large rock formations to thrust itself out of the earth in such an abrupt fashion, in a place which otherwise looks just like a normal, relatively flat plain full of scrub brush. Maybe God just made them that way...? I do have some pictures of the inselbergs, which I will post when I can. They remind me of the rock islands in Halong Bay off the coast of Vietnam...
At 1 PM, I stopped under a tree for a drink and a break (a motorbike is NOT a comfortable seat after 4 hours). I was sweating like a pig, covered in dust, and starting to sunburn, so I slathered my arms in industrial-strength sunscreen before pushing on again. I knew that eventually I would need to turn westward again onto another road, away from Nampula and towards the coast, but I had no idea how much longer that would be.
I think it was during this stop that I noticed the first sign of a problem with my motorbike. The bracket holding on the top portion of the leg guard had broken off due to the rattling. I don't really understand the purpose of the leg guard, anyway, since anything that would hit my leg hard enough to hurt me would instead hit the leg guard and probably knock the motorbike over. The bottom bracket was still holding, but the nut was beginning to losen and I had no wrench with which I could tighten it. The leg guard does not comprise any key part of the bike, but I had visions in my head of it coming loose while I was traveling at a high speed. If this were to happen, it would probably fall underneath the bike, and in my imagination this might cause me to go flying through the air, still traveling at 80 km/hr but no longer safely perched on the seat. Not cool.
The loosening screw was causing the bottom bracket of the guard to scrape the side of the engine compartment, which didn't really worry me but did create a tremendous screeching racket. Hearing this, and fearing what it might mean for my safety, I decided to try to keep my average speed at 70 instead of 80. If staying safe meant that I would have to drive in the dark, then drive in the dark I must.
I drove onward, and sure enough, it was only about 20 km before I hit the town of Namialo where I turned eastward towards the coast and Ilha. I had no idea how far Ilha was, but I guessed about 200 kilometers, which was depressing because it was already close to 2 PM and I was worried about my bike. I was back on a high-quality road again (the road from Metoro to Namialo had LOTS of potholes, which also keeps on one one's toes when careening along at 80 km/hr... no telling what would happen if you hit one of those big potholes going 80 on a motorbike). However, my bike was making worse noises than ever, and after about 30 km I pulled over to examine the troublesome bracket. Sure enough, it was much looser now, and one of the screws had come out, so one side of the guard was scratching up and down the right side of the engine compartment, causing the noise. I determined to fix the problem and remove the guard. I think it looks stupid anyway.
Unfortunately, I had no tools, so I would have to to resort to repeatedly bending the metal back and forth, twisting it around until the lone remaining screw finally broke, hoping that this would not dislodge some other key component in the motor. Having carefully examined the motor and assured myself that this would not happen, I finally broke the guard off (picture of the bike, guard-less, to come at a later date) and threw it to the side of the road, where I'm sure it will be picked up and used for something meaningful by a passing pedestrian. Satisfied that I had "fixed" the problem, I climbed back on and continued on my way.
Twenty minutes later, I was overjoyed to pass a sign that read "Ilha de Mocambique, 52 km". Here I thought I was three hours from the island, and it turns out that I'm less than an hour away! I promptly lowered my average speed to 60.
Here I pause to write a brief note about being stared at in Moz. In America, staring is rude. Even if you're curious, you don't just go staring at people, and, as a matter of consequence, if you are driving down the street on a motorbike and EVERY SINGLE PERSON stares at you as you pass by, you start to think that you must be driving along with toilet paper stuck to the bottom of your foot, or a sign on your back, or something.
In Mozambique, I think that staring must not be rude, because everywhere I go, whether out in the bush, in a village, or in a town, I get stared at. People are curious, and instead of suppressing that curiosity as we do in America, they indulge it, and they stare.
It takes some getting used to, being stared at all the time, and without speculation on the negative effects it might have on someone who is exceptionally self-conscious, I can definitely say that it does not help someone who is trying to monitor the state of a speeding and perhaps decomposing motorbike while riding it through the Mozambican countryside. Would they stare at me if my bike were making a racket worthy of a rock concert, or if the muffler were trailing behind? Yes! Would they stare at me if it weren't? Yes! These folks are no help.
Fortunately, my bike was not, indeed, falling apart (not yet), and an hour later, I crossed the 4km bridge to Ilha. I had traveled 395 kilometers in roughly 7 hours, with almost no problems, and, though filthy, sunburned and sweating, I felt victorious. To all the people who said I couldn'twouldn'tshouldn't, you were wrong! To my own fears that told me I would be marooned with a broken motorbike on my hands, you were wrong, too!
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| First of all, for those who asked... Yes, the fish is real. I know it looks fake because of that weird-looking fish eye, but it is real. My project ends tomorrow, and I'm excited about that. I've learned a tremendous amount about the tourism industry, about consulting work in general, and about business in developing countries, but I am ready to stop working and PLAY for a while. I've got a long entry coming (too long, actually, but what the hey...) but since I don't have it on me right now I have just two quick stories. The first one happened last Saturday night in Quelimane. After finishing up our client meetings for the day, we went with one of our clients to his father's house, in a rural area about 5 km outside of Quelimane. This client, M, is a member of the Mozambican parliament, aged 37, currently working on a PhD in England, and is an incredible guy. Anyway, so we go to his father's house for dinner. We had met his father many times before and stopped by his house on a number of occasions to pick up and drop him off, but never been in the house. The evening basically turned into a huge party, with a good chunk of M's extended family coming by to say hello, eat, and dance. The music and dancing, which started near the end of the evening when I was already exhausted, was pretty awesome. These folks really love to dance! I didn't get any pictures, because that would've ruined it, but experiencing Zambezian culture in a home out in the sticks like that was pretty cool. Probably the most interesting part of the evening, though, was the goat head. We had goat for dinner ("cobrito" in Portuguese) and it was awesome. But at one point M was sitting and talking to me about how the head is the best part of the goat. I didn't really understand, because isn't a head mostly bone? I asked him if there were any meat left on the head, and he said probably so. We walk over to the table and he pulls the head out of this pot. There's not much left on it, just a pretty bare-looking skull. He points to the eye socket, telling me that the eye is actually the BEST part, but of course that's already gone (of course...) Then, without fanfare, he takes a large knife, sticks it into a crack somewhere in the top of the skull, and splits the thing open. Inside is a bunch of something, something that I wouldn't call meat, but that didn't look like brains either. I'm not sure WHAT it was. It looked like it came from the area where the nasal passages would be. Anyway, so M heaps this big rubbery slimy mass on my plate, and I'm staring at it thinking, "oh man, now what have I gotten myself into..." I walk back to my seat and sit down, stick my fork into the least-suspicious looking piece of stuff I can find, chop a big bite off, and put it in my mouth. As I'm doing this, all I can think of is that what I'm eating looks like a mixture of skin and maybe some of the fatty tissue in the corner of your eye, or something like that. Even though it looked like it came from inside the skull, it really looked like skin to me. I chew. And chew. And nearly retch. I've eaten a lot of strange things in my life (see Flickr Cambodia pictures...) but this was the most difficult. It's not that it tasted gross, it's just that it was so rubbery or maybe fatty. I had a really tough time getting it down, but eventually I did. Of course I couldn't eat the whole mess of whatever it was that he put on my plate after almost yarfing on the first bite, so, as discreetly as I could manage, I waited until the cacophony in the room seemed to reach a local maximum and palmed my plate off on the nearest table where a couple of other dirty plates were waiting to be picked up by someone. Harrowing. The second story comes from a missionary I had dinner with last night. He told me that down in Zambezia, where he used to live (Zambezia is also where Quelimane and Pebane are, which I visited last week), people sometimes use a certain "technique" to provide themselves with food on long motorbike trips through the bush. Now, understand that most of the roads here totally suck. You can't go too fast in any kind of vehicle when you're driving on the sand roads, so a trip through a couple of provinces can take a few days if the roads are in bad condition. In these circumstances, what people will sometimes do to feed themselves is strap a live pig to the back of the motorbike. After a day of driving, they stop and cut a leg off of the pig, bandage the pig up to keep it alive. Cook the leg and eat it. Drive all day the next day, three-legged pig on the back of the motorbike. At the end of the day, stop and cut another leg off of the pig. Bandage this one up as well, cook the leg and eat it. By this time, the pig is still alive, but probably freaking out and going into shock, having lost two of its legs. Next day, drive again and cut a third leg off for dinner. Bandage this one up, but the pig probably dies now, having been put through a truly horrific experience, and they eat the rest of it. However, because they managed to keep it alive for three days or so, they have been able to have fresh meat for three or four or maybe even five days when it would have spoiled if they had just slaughtered it on day one. I tell this story not because I think it's cool, but because when I heard it I thought to myself, "now THAT is a story that illustrates a little bit of how different life is for some people here." I think my mouth fell open when I heard the story... Brutal... Ok, off to work. | | |
| Diving I went diving this morning, and the diving here is every bit as awesome as it is rumored to be. The fish were amazing, the coral very good. I saw tons of lionfish! I had never seen a lionfish before, and they are really something to see. Really unbelievable. I stared and stared. We also saw sea slugs, these tiny little shrimp, and some of the most beautiful fish I have ever seen. Our divemaster Pieter said that he has been close enough to reach and touch a whale here (yes, a whale, not a whale shark!) and said that was a truly amazing experience. Maybe next time... We didn't see any whales. We got as deep at 24 meters and I was down about 40 minutes. What an incredible dive! And all for only $47 US. I'm probably going to go on at least one more dive with Pieter before I leave Mozambique, and maybe multiples. This was really a lot better than when I got certified in Thailand. The visibility then was awful... Here's a quote from Pieter, our South African divemaster, a fellow in his late 50s or early 60s who has lived in Pemba for 14 years. "Africa is doomed. Africa has no future, not like Europe or America." Hmmm... Definitely the most pessimistic viewpoint on the spectrum of all those I've heard. Food for thought. Here's a picture of some fishermen who were fishing near our boat. It's a bit blurry because I was fully zoomed in and the boat was moving, but you can see their boat, a little outrigger canoe of the type that is popular here. No motors. They catch some enormous fish, though. You often see people walking along the side of the road carrying a string with a bunch of fish on it, or sometimes two men with a pole with fish hanging over it. Basically, this means that any fish you get in a restaurant was caught today. Tasty!  On Lack of Movement I've been in Pemba for five full weeks now, and I realized last night that this is probably the longest length of time in at least two years that I haven't set foot on a plane. I also have not traveled more than 20 km away from the guesthouse where I stay in all this time, and that is DEFINITELY a record, probably for my entire life. Five weeks within a 20 km radius. It's amazing to me. There are many people here who will never set foot outside Cabo Delgado province in their lives, and almost every Mozambican I've met here has never traveled outside Mozambique. Most have never even been to Maputo, the capital. It really makes me aware of the level of privilege we have in the West... The streak will end tomorrow, though. I fly with my coworker Paulo to Nampula, where we will stay overnight at the brand new and very tacky but clean and pleasant Milenio Hotel before flying on to Quelimane on Monday evening. You can't get to Quelimane from Pemba in a single day. How ridiculous is that? All the passenger air traffic that happens in this country can fit in a weekly schedule on two pages (one for each of the crappy airlines that operates here). Fish On His Head On Thursday I was driving home from work and saw a kid walking along with a huge fish on his head. File this under "things you'll never see in America." You see lots of people carrying things on their heads here (it's pretty amazing, actually, the things they manage to put on their heads) but this is the first time I've seen a fish. At the time, I really wished that I had a small, inconspicuous camera, so I could take a picture. After a minute, I decided to turn around and get my point and shoot digital out and take a picture anyway. I circled back and drove by him pretty slowly, with one attempt to get a picture, but I could tell that it would be blurry, so I just decided to stop and ask if I could take his picture. "Photo?" while holding up my camera? The immediate response: "Money." I knew it was coming, and it still annoys me, but whatever. I get asked for money so often here that I'm in danger of becoming totally inured to the plight of the poor. The kids here will lie through their teeth, and I guess I would do the same if I were as poor as they are, but I feel objectified for the first time. To them I am a giant cash machine. I asked one kid the other day, "Do you know how much school debt I have? Do you know what $120,000 looks like?" He just stared at me. "Cuanto costa?" I ask the kid, and after a pause he replies "Cinquenta." Fifty meticais, two bucks. "Vinte" (twenty), I respond, and after a moment he nods. At least he understands the dynamics of this transaction. I get pissed off, I take a picture and leave without paying him anything. I know that would be the rude American thing to do, but after the number of times I've been ripped off by the police and hassled by the locals for stupid stuff, it's tempting. I snap the photo and pull a bill out of my pocket, thinking it's a twenty. Realizing it's a fifty, and that I probably don't have a twenty on me, I shrug and hand it to him. "Cinquenta."  | | |
| I've been working on another entry and it's gotten quite long. Hopefully I'll post it soon, but in the meantime, I want to post the first two pictures that I've been able to upload to the internet since arriving here in Pemba a month ago. It took about 20 minutes, and, since I don't have regular internet access, or ANY access from my own laptop, this is the first time I've been able to do the upload (I'm using a coworker's laptop, on a dialup connection from the office, while she's out of town, so I can let it sit and upload while I work on my own laptop). So, here are a couple pictures of my motorbike. It's a 50 cc bike of some nondescript variety, probably made in Dubai, and I will be selling it to another American here when I leave for 60% of its new value (18,000 Mtc, or about $700). Buying this thing has been the best decision I've made since coming here. The mobility it provides is fabulous, and it's really fun to ride, too! These pictures were taken by my friend Estefano when we rode the bike to a beach called Murrebue last weekend. This was an adventure in itself, because the road to Murrebue is a sand road, what one of my coworkers here would refer to as "not so much good." Getting there was lots of fun and hopefully I'll get to post some pictures of the trip soon, too. It's about 20 km from Pemba, but it's the best beach I've been to yet. Cheap eats and very peaceful! Or, as the chicken shirt I'm wearing in this picture says "Meningue nice!" 
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