Lamego, 26.6.2006

Getting social in Mozambique...

Thanks to hitch-hiking (don't worry, it's like everywhere else, wether you meet the right people or not, we so far have, and if we wouldn't hitch-hike, we wouldn't be able to go anywhere at all, because we would just spend our time waiting for the transport that never comes...) me and Barbara have got to know some rather high society of Mozambique such as lawyers and government workers etc. In short, very different people from the ones we know in Lamego. And thanks to these new aquintances, our lives here have changed quite a lot, we have finally become social, we've gone out and we've even travelled a little bit! We've also had talks that we imagine would be not possible to have in this country, normal, normal, normal talks with normal, normal, normal people. Ok, just to make it clear, I'm not saying that the only normal people here are these “ high class wealthy ones” (high class in African scale, not in the European one), but I must admit that I've felt happy and free spending time with folks that don't want to talk to me only because I'm white, folks who know what is Estonia and even about it's history, folks who have maybe travelled to the same places is Europe or South America that I have etc... It's just that their horizonts are so much wider than the ones “normal” Mozambiquians have that it's just much easier to relate to them and find a common tongue. And having been in Lamego where the biggest entertainment is football in the village’s one and only TV, we were really longing for something different…

Anyway, here's some points I've picked up from few of the get-togethers we've had with our new friends (or they friends or friends' friends or...). And these are not the points that I admire, in fact I just bring up the things that are strange or funny or stupid, all the rest has been just too normal to talk about!:)

So, imagine a garden barbeque party with about 30 people. There's a huge house 5 minute walk from the ocean that is basically empty and used only for garden parties (!). Imagine a pool, and a huge backyard, and a dozen expensive cars. Drinks and a barbeque. Guys are commenting on the last match in the World Cup, and enjoying their drinks. Girls – there are not too many of them – just hang about, talking only among themselves, almost never among men. I saw one girl standing in a circle of guys for about an hour, without saying ANYthing at all, just nodding along the music and looking a bit sad through her model-smile. Some other girls were setting up the meat for the barbeque and taking care of it for the rest of the night. Guys had the task of eating. We got a bit more attention (at least in the beginning) in obvious reasons, but were soon left behind as well. It's truth though, people were a lot more concerned wether we have our drinks and if we feel fine etc.

I must say, this was not one of our usual parties, we kind of ended up there for a while. We had a barbeque just a week before that one among our new friends with less people in a normal sized backyard with no faaaancy or fancy wannabe bunch of people who didn't even know each other, and it was great! Even though, also there, we were the most social girls, the local beauties just ate the meat and stayed on their own. (To answer the question on , some minds, I had fish.)

I guess the Mozambique girls (in spite of their stunning looks) feel a bit uneasy when two whities are around as they become slightly like overprotective over their territory. Haha. I got my second racial assault (first one was a small boy showing the middle finger by the road while we drove past, if you can call it a racial assault) during last 4 months at that fancy barbeque. One cheeky lady walked in on Barbara in the toilet (even though I had repeated like 3 times that it's occupied) and said to me afterwards (as if talking to an idiot) that they cannot understand my Portuguese. Heh, I repeated one word only. And that's what I told her (in perfect enough Portuguese): Which part of ocupada you did not get? Grrrrr

And this last weekend as we were driving back from Beira to Lamego Junior, our really nice friend from Chimoio, stopped in a gas station to greet his friends who among their friends were having a crazy party just right there, in the gas station! It was so funny, 3-4 cars pulled over and totally blocking the entrance of the station shop, doors and trunks open and serving drinks, loud music etc... Well, it was Mozambique's 31st Independence Day, and they all seemed very happy. We didn't stay, though, had to get back to beautiful Lamego and Junior to Chimoio (workoholic as he is)...

I don't know if I've made any sense. It's kind of hard to explain all these things going on here, but I can tell, for the first time, me and Barbara are thinking that it would be nice actually to stay a little bit longer in Moz....


PS! Oh, and the work's great as well. Well, more-less at least. We're organizing Olimpic Games for 900 people next weekend... Hehe, I'll let you know how it turned out!