who am i?

Your Birthdate: January 29

You have the mind of an artist, even if you haven't developed the talent yet.
Expressive and aware, you enjoy finding new ways to share your feelings.
You often feel like you don't fit in - especially in traditional environments.
You have big dreams. The problem is putting those dreams into action.

Your strength: Your vivid imagination

Your weakness: Fear of failure

Your power color: Coral

Your power symbol: Oval

Your power month: November

http://www.blogthings.com/whatdoesyourbirthdatemeanquiz/

the twenty-second spring

My twenty-second spring is almost here. I can smell it in the air as the sky gets higher and higher every day, as the birds just wouldn't keep quiet anymore and as the wind is turning more to fresh and less to cold. Every day.

My twenty-second spring is like no spring ever experienced before. It is clearer, sweeter, happier and more colourful than any spring ever before. It doesn't matter that we cry, sometimes. It doesn't matter that we argue over the most ridiculous and unimportant things, sometimes. It doesn't matter that we drive each other mad in a bad way, sometimes (and in a good way, a lot more times:P). It doesn't matter that we don't always understand the actions, the words or thoughts of another. It doesn't even matter that the spring is not here yet.

My twenty-second spring is like a question we often ask each other - where have you been so far? It feels so natural that it almost makes us forget about the amazingness of it. It feels like it should have arrived so long time ago, before so many springs, so many others, before so many pointlessnesses, so many gap fillings, so many nothingnesses thought to mean a thing. Neverthless, I am greatful for it to have come, after all. Now, here - and to me.

My twenty-second spring will never be forgotten by me, I know that. Even if it should end one day and be changed for a hot and tropical or chilly and wet summer of some kind, my twenty-second spring will never leave my mind, my heart. All the cells of my body will remember the touch of t h i s spring - all the kisses, secret spots and warm breath.

My twenty-second spring is the best thing ever happened to me.

truly madly deeply

It is strange how extremely unbalanced I've lately felt. Sometimes, due to tiny, insignificant (?) almost unnoticeable things and sometimes thanks to seemingly nothing at all I get this unbearable weight of happiness on me. Everything seems so right, so perfect, so good… I feel like it’s the right moment of whatever’s happening; that everything is following the path it was supposed to and that the course of universe is finally on the same tracks with mine.

… and the other times…

Due to nothing at all, again, thanks to a small wind that gently blew and rocked everything in me, because of tears that hadn’t been shed for some time now and begged to come out again, I get sad. And hopeless. And pessimistic. Nothing seems to go as planned or hoped. Doubts fill all my cells in all over my body. Is it how I am supposed to continue with my life? What if not? Am I supposed to believe in all the words too perfect to be true? What if they’re not? True, I mean. Does it just feel a bit better little before a new way downhill? Oh, my…

And the times between these times.

I just flow. Or try. Try to flow. Try to make it. To the next island, to the next continent. To the next chapter, if you like. And sometimes I seem to accomplish it. And sometimes I tend to stagger. Between these times. And the others. And the others.

29. 10. 2006

Just to let you know that I finally left Mozambique but not quite in the way I was supposed to (via SA to Malawi) - I just came home. The journey was very tireing, a night bus from Maputo to Johannesburg, there waiting about 17 hours in the airport, then 11 hours flight to London, spent a day in the town and then in the evening, another flight home (just 2,5 hours, but still)... Well, I guess I had bigger emotional and cultural shock going from Mozambique to SA than from Africa to Europe. I guess having spent the last month in the capital Maputo, I wasnt overwhelmed by shopping malls and high streets. It felt nice to be totally 100% anonymous on the street, nobody cares what are you doing, where are you going, how are you, because I am not special anymore!:P
Being back in rather chilly Estonia feels strange, like I never even left. But at the same time, I have almost no attachements here, am just about creating them here and now - job, decorating my room (lol... does that count?), meeting old friends etc... So, this is my last message for the "Mozambique" group, hope you enjoyed the updates and take care! Ate a proxima!

Forever Mozambique

Yes people, it seems like I fell in love with this beautiful country and never ever want to leave again. ‘Cause I’m still here. Well, tiny Lamego has been changed to huge Maputo, but still… I am here and have no idea when I can leave… The trick is very easy, the South African embassy just needs to give me a visa. This hasn’t happened so far, after 1, 5 months trying. And very soon, in about 2 months I’ll already fly home to my dear icy country. So let’s see if my African adventure will finish here or shall I get to know any other places.

The first few weeks of my waiting I spent in beautiful Lamego, but it got a bit too depressing after all my team mates left to the civilization and there was nothing to do, and not even a will to do anything… so I stayed with Antonia (a nice woman whom I met in my investigation) for a week, saw some beaches (missed the sharks, unfortunately) and relaxed a lot. And now I’ve been in the capital of Mozambique, the Real City of Maputo for a few days and actually it’s not so bad. I feel like back in the real world, it’s really… I mean, they have everything here- THEATRES and (art) museums and INTERNATIONAL (DOCUMENTARY) FILM FESTIVALS…like we say in Estonia: what else can my soul desire… so I’ve walked my feet sore during last two days, breathing in the precious polluted city air, walking actually on a pavement, not being stared at t h a t much and sometimes feeling like I’m in Brazil in some reason.

But the one thing that hasn’t still changed is the dumbness and chauvinism of Mozambique men. For all those who’ve been secretly or openly wondering about my dating and extra status I can assure it’s not only big fat zero, it’s already in minus, I’m afraid. I just cannot bring myself to tolerate the total lack of respect here for anyone without a penis. And when some volunteers find it funny or amusing that all the women here are good for just hard (physical or any other type) of work and exploiting, then I have unfortunately lost any hope for an African man, be it generalization or not, and cannot take them seriously in any level (the few exceptions I know are just confirm the statement).

Kristiina,

Maputo, 21.09.2006

Investigating Northern Mozambique…

So, believe it or not, but my time in Mozambique is almost over. And to celebrate this big event, me and B went to Northern Mozambique to see how life is in the most Islamic and least Portuguese-speaking part of this beautiful country. So, what are the results? We didn’t meet any elephants or lions, dammit, but plenty of monkeys and sealife. Our journey started actually still in Sofala province, where we live, in paradise beach Savane to celebrate B’s birthday and the beginning of the end. From Beira a few days later we got onto a plane from a fabulous company called Air Corridor and flew to Nampula. Through Pemba. If you look at the map, you’ll see why I pointed it out. And we flew in the cockpit. J the story is, that the owner of the Savane resort knew the pilot and sent him just a little note written on a piece of paper. We gave it to a stewardess to pass it on to the pilot, and there we were, 5 minutes later, sitting and chatting with the pilots, enjoying the view, having 1st class snacks, announcing messages to the cabin crew through the loudspeaker etc. It was so much fun!:) the fun seemed to have ended in Nampula, where it was already dark when we got there and we had no transport to Nacala, our first goal to arrive to (almost 200 km away). So, hanging around the airport, a woman in a nice red 4WD car asked us where we are going and said, yeah, hop on, let’s go to Nacala! Amazing! Antonia took us to beautiful Humana center and during next few days picked us up to go to Nacala town for seafood lunch and dinners in her sister’s house several times…. I have never eaten that much seafood in my life… fish, calamari, prawns, octopus, lobster…. Oh my god… and she also took us on a trip to Ilha de Mocambique, one of the most touristic places around here. I mean, we mostly stayed in a car and only walked around a bit, I wish I could have had time to wonder around a bit more, but we saw most of it and it was really beautiful and really poor so the amazing beach is also an amazing toilet…
We also had our first curandeiro (the witch doctor) experience. Antonia took us there, of course. This curandeiro is famous for his “talking pot” that is supposedly able to tell one about the future and health and whatever. So we went to check it out. It was quite interesting actually. Every village has a curandeiro and it’s easy to recognize the house as it’s usually colourfully painted with different symbols and pictures. And as we learned, also inside. The funny thing is that there is also a price list and this kind of posters on the wall next to mystical symbols. Anyway, there actually was something “talking” in or around the little pot, sounding like a small child who has not quite learned to form the words yet but.. first of all, it only spoke macua, the local language so we couldn’t ask any questions. And in my case it refused to say anything, the curandeiro interprating it like my life was perfect, there is nothing to comment…
Our next stopping point after Nacala was Pemba, a very touristic town about 6 hours from Nacala. It has an amazing beach (amazing from around noon with high tide, not so nice, full of seaweed etc before that), a five star hotel, but not much else. It also felt quite unsafe for us, especially when we wandered around ghostly center with ruins of former glorious houses and empty, dusty streets. One evening I managed to go to theatre second time during last six months – it was an international work, co-operation between actors from I think 6 African countries (Portuguese and French speaking ones). They used masks and other traditional elements which was cool. And actually, it was a really good piece, although hardly half an hour long. And it started, of course, almost 3 hours after the announced time, and before the actual play, the audience was forced to live through several other performers, including two women’s culture groups (which was not too bad), supertoosexy teenage dance (very bad) and a young guy singing romantic cheesy songs (just guess…)…
From Pemba we had a looong but quite comfy bus ride to the very north of Mozambique, a village called Mueda. There was supposed to be the best place to see a traditional dance with masks called mapiko and also, the village should have amazing views over a huge valley… Note the word should. When we finally got there (after like 10 hours in a bus, entertaining the locals through the window and failing to take any pictures of hundreds of fast monkeys on the road and not going out to pee because the road was in the bush full of elefants and lions and other creatures that we did not see) it turned out that the mapiko group cannot perform and no locals had heard of any view. I tried to explain in my ever getting worse Portuguese about hills and valleys, but most people only spoke suahili and other languages, so I probably couldn’t make myself understood. Our disappointment was even greater when we learned from a French couple later that night that the view not too far from the hostel was really breathtaking. Hakuna matata!
So, the very next morning we took the bus again very early in the morning to find ourselves in a little junction village called Macomia. Our new destination was Pangane, an undiscovered paradise beach North from Pemba. And it w a s amazing…. Totally white sand, the bluest sea you can ever imagine, long coconut trees ending in the deep, blue sky with a few occasional cotton-seeming clouds. Even the people were so beautiful, very very dark, their faces long and maybe having a drop of asiatic features in them… many women wore white masks made from a misuri tree to make one’s skin soft and nice. Of course, we had to try it out as well. Well, I don’t know about other side effects, but our faces got rather sunburnt under the masks, because we forgot the sun cream. And I managed to burn my legs as well… stupid me… Anyway, the paradise would have been complete if there wouldn’t have been 25 friendly, but a bit too loud middle-aged+ Italians…plus a very proper British family. And in the last night, 5 tanned and bearded guys stepped to the beach from a little boat… Me and Barbara went to sleep at 8 o’clock, like usually, of course.
What else happened in our journey? We saw dolphins, got even more sick and tired of Humana People to People and arrived safely in Lamego to stay here just for a week more. Most people head straight home, I think only 3 or 4 people from our team of 12 are going on to Camp Future, which for me means Durban, SA and from there, who knows… Plans are connected to Malawi…

22. August 06 still in Lamego
Kristiina

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!