Hello and Welcome back to Nicane!

One and a half week ago we finally arrived back home with a car full of luggage and water filters for Erik’s project.
The journey was beautiful, interesting, sometimes troublesome…
The first day we made it to our proposed destination: “Marimba-Secret Gardens” at Vilanculos, about 750 km North of Maputo on Highway number 1: which is a big word for a two lane tar road at its best points, turning into a single lane gravel road at some points.
Marimba is a lodge run by a Swiss couple whom we met in Maputo. The put all their heart, soul and creativity into this project and it is a really lovely spot: 25 km out of town along the coast (you really need 4x4 to get there, otherwise they pick you up in town). Have a look at www.marimba.ch/
That day, they had no guest (for the first time since many weeks) and so we had paradise for ourselves. The cabins are built a bit away from the beach and you walk through a little forest to a private beach where only some local fisherman pass every now and then.
If someone is still locking for the ideal honeymoon spot… that would be the place to be!
So we stayed one day and enjoyed being there and the nice company of Isabel and Marcel, the Swiss couple.
That was the easy part. The next day the battery of our car decided to go for a walk but very soon found its way cut off by the air-co pulley which cut a whole into the battery’s side and distributed the contents of it all over the engine compartment. Luckily a nice lady working for ADPP – where we had to stop to get some documents for the water filters – helped us to get a new battery on that Sunday afternoon (of course all mechanics were out of town that day) while we washed the acid off basically every part under the bonnet.
We could continue our journey and the next day we finally arrived in Nicane, after about 2300 km.
We spent the following few days rearranging our house, saving the rest of the veggie garden and getting back into the village routine. On Sunday we went to the Anglican church in Monapo and it is probably going to be our regular church for the time being. Erik works with the lay preacher they have and we felt very warmly welcomed there.
Churches in Mozambique are, by the way and as in most other African countries, a very diverse group (if you could call it one). Even the dozens of reformed churches in the Netherlands seem to offer a poor choice compared to it. You have of course the catholic church, the Lutheran church, two types of Methodist churches, the Presbyterian church, the Anglican church and then there are all the Zionist groups, the Pentecostal churches, Adventists and so on with the in Portuguese speaking developing countries very widespread Universal Church of the Kingdom of God and Assembly of God. The women of the Seventh Day Adventist Church are easily recognised when going to church as they wear white clothes and puffy white caps.
And then there are thousands of small congregations, of which it seems that they sometimes only consist of that one church – like the one we saw in Maputo: “Church of the Mountain of fire and miracles”. One I also liked is called: “Gospel in Action”.
In Nicane, with an estimated 3000 inhabitants, there are 2 mosques and 5 churches. Though one would not recognise any of them as a church. They are simple clay brick houses with straw our sometimes tin roofs. And the mosques can be recognised by what I always that was a backing oven integrated into the houses walls: the place that indicates the direction of Mecca. Sometimes a simple wooden cross along the road near the church indicates that one of the nearby houses is a church.
The Anglican church in Monapo, counting about 50 members, has concrete brick walls and had a tin roof which was partially blown away by a storm. The windows are holes in the wall, as is the door. There are some wooden benches, that are stored in a nearby living members house, no Altar, no cross, nothing... In the first instance I was quite shocked. Everything looked so desolate and sad, and that handful of members sitting on the benches. The kids had to wear shoes (after all it is Sunday!) but were pulling them of all the time with their mothers and older sisters putting them back on.
On the other hand, this is only the outside appearance and that should not matter. But the contrast between the wealth in our churches and the poor conditions here seemed to overrule any other impression. I thought I’d rather have the service in a cosy straw cabin, fitting the surroundings and meeting the financial conditions of the congregation. But that might again be the vision of romanticising Western girl.
The thing about kids an shoes I had observed earlier as well. In Ricatla , when sitting on the perch with the computer I would observe the kids. One had a little bike and the only hard surface on the area was a small pathway of concrete around the guesthouse. So they would play there with that bike (e.g. one kid being the policeman and the other one with the bike would be the car to be stopped and got his “drive-card” checked). And sometimes around lunchtime, after they had to help on the fields, they came walking along: older sister (about 5 years) carrying the hoe on her head (hands free!!! in Europe we would say: don’t touch it. It’s dangerous! You will hurt yourself!) and little one (about 3 years) behind. Carrying some cabbage in a bag on her head and her slippers in her hand... obviously it was much more comfortable without them... at least for her  )
The next days I tried to get to some agreements with our ex-guard. We still have to pay him, until there is an agreement on the discharge terms, so I thought he could as well help me with some heavier work around the house. But his work-discipline seems to have decreased considerably. Until now we had to working moments of each about 3-4 hours. I will have to figure out something about how to deal with this problem. I do not want to leave him completely without income or employment, but like now it is not going to work on a long term.
And in the middle of all this I got my first Malaria. Not that I thought I would get away. But right now, towards the end of the dry season there are so little mosquitoes that I did not expect it. But I did the test (try once: prick into your own finger, squeeze out some blood and get it into a small capillary tube...all my left hand fingers had their turn before I had some blood in that capillary tube) and then I dripped it into the wrong hole of the test strip (looks like a pregnancy test: Yippy, pregnant with thousands of cute tiny malaria parasites!) and so I had to do it all over again. The test showed a very slight purple stripe indicating Malaria type one. I didn’t trust it and so there I went: piercing all my fingers again: with the same result. So I put myself onto the usual Mozambican Malaria treatment (available without prescription at any pharmacy). I did not feel like driving 35 km to the nearest hospital and back.
Now, a few days later, the treatment is finished and I feel better. Only sometimes that terrible headache hits me again. But that seems to be common!
Maybe if we are in town next week I might have a test at a health centre to make sure I got rid of it completely. In the meantime I continue to drink the Artemisia tea (awful stuff, real medicine!) and some lemon grass tea (helps sweating malaria toxins out... not that I would not yet be sweating like a pig now that it is getting warmer here).
Okay, that again was a long story. There just happen so many things and there are so many interesting observations I would like to share... and of course the keep piling up if one only writes once a month or less...

I me texts are too long, please someone let me know, so I can adapt to your reading customs.

Tata,
Anna

PS. Maarten, alsje zover bent gekomen ;-) : mijn studenten zijn meestal tussen 20-30 jaar, sommigen zijn ergens tussen 30 en 50.

About the pictures:
It’s a bit a collection of some impressions of Maputo, the travel back north and some examples of things I am telling...