The many happiness of the Chinese shop.
The Chinese shops that have popped up over the last two years in Pemba have greatly improved my quality of life, selling, as they do, a fantastic range of cheap, useful and useless items. Most of all, they provide moments of unexpected levity. At Christmas, I bought the traditional pair of underpants for Paulo's stocking. This one came with blurb that promised, amongst other things, that these pants "give a man a direction". Today's offering, in a small green bottle: 'Sod milk'.
All other lettering in Chinese, so I remain unenlightened.
Labels: Pemba life
Guest blogger: Joaquim
Hi, it's me again. I've been doing lots of cool stuff and I want to tell you about it. First of all, I am a karate champion. I won two gold and a silver medal at the Pemba karate championships and they look soooo cool.
I took the medals to school the next day to show my friends, and now I've put them in my treasure box. The gold medals were for the juniors championship, I did a really good demonstration - I've been practising at home - and then I had to fight this mean little kid. He kicked me in the neck - which is against the rules - and made me cry, but I got up again and kept fighting and then won. We shook hands after the fight so it was OK. Sebastian, Eva, Mum and Pai were there to watch, and we had grilled chicken and chips to celebrate afterwards.
S: I love chicken and chips.
Then there was a cowboy party. Sebastian and I looked cool and dangerous. There was a horse, but I didn't get on, it was really big. Sebastian did though.
S: I wasn't scared.
Then there was another karate thing, a graduation this time, and our teacher was really tough on us and made us work really hard in the sun for hours. But I got my next belt.
S: I got a bit bored and took lots of photos, but we had more chicken and chips afterwards. I love chicken and chips.
And then, there was a fund-raiser at school, International Day. Everyone had to go dressed in a national costume. Sebastian chose French, Eva and Mum went Chinese, Pai wore a silly straw hat, and I was an English Country Gentleman and I won a prize: PIZZA AND A SOFT DRINK! Awesome! Mum also won a prize with her cupcakes, for the prettiest cake. I thought they were pretty delicious.
S: I liked my moustache.
Hmmm, that's about it. We're going on holiday in 10 days, which is soooo exciting. Sebastian and I are crossing the days off on the calendar. Pai and Mum seem to be quite excited too. Eva is too little to know.
S: It's MY turn to cross it off today.
Byeeeeeee! Joaquim xxx
PS: This is Pai looking silly.
Labels: holidays, Joaquim, Pemba life, Sebastian
Big week-end, vol. 2
So, while you lot were glued to the RW on TV, or perhaps amongst the cheering crowds of well-wishers (really? wow), we were preparing a party in Chuiba for some friends who were leaving Pemba for Guadeloupe via Paris. Turned into a rather big event, notable for one young lady almost severing her toe on a broken glass (although fortunately she was drunk enough not to feel the full impact), another young man splitting his head on the bottom of the pool (ibid), the bar almost completely running out of booze, apart from a few beers, and dancing until 6 in the morning. Even me. I don't think I've done that since I started having babies. Paulo and I were manning the bar, which is I think why I made it through, as the hours of 10-2 are a blurr of tequila slammers, double everythings, and red bull (that's what I was serving, not drinking, although I confess to a few tequilas). Bet it was better than Will and Kate's shindig.
Labels: Pemba life
Warning: contains graphic reptile photos
Well I may not have had my camera to hand when I fed a hapless grasshopper to a hungry chameleon, but I certainly had it when we found said chameleon's big brother/sister (or perhaps other half?) in the garden.
What a beautiful beastie! (Although I suspect my mother may not agree...)
Sebastian was extremely impressed, and gamely handled it - gently - before we released it into a cashew tree.
Now I think that's a pretty big chameleon, and I know that Northern Mozambique is home to the world's second-largest chameleon (the largest, and also smallest I think, are found on Madagascar), but I don't know enough to judge whether this is an example of it. Any ideas, naturalist friends? (Should that be naturist? Which one means nudist? I always get confused, but hey, my nudist friends are also welcome to air their opinions!)
Chameleons really are exceptionally cool. Fused toes, funky walk, eyes that look in different directions, and of course the ability to change colour at will. This one obliged by going from greenish - as you can see in the photos - to grey/brown when we placed it on the trunk of the cashew tree. I once had to kill a chameleon as part of some field research (humanely, I hasten to add). It went completely black - one the saddest things I ever saw or had to do. But let's hope this one has a long and happy life.
Labels: Pemba life
Nature red in tooth and claw
A good day for nature's predators yesterday.
Spike caught what we think was his first mouse - right at my feet - cue a great deal of excitement from him and us. Utama immediately nicked it off him then chewed it noisily just off the veranda (lovely). We have noticed a distinct reduction in rodent activity at home recently; it seems our Jack Russel investment is paying off.
Earlier in the day, a chameleon that had wandered into the house (much to Rafina's alarm as they are considered by local people to be highly venomous, despite being in fact totally harmless) was relocated to a mango sapling outside the yard. As Joaquim, Sebastian and our neighbour Gen watched, I tempted it with a captured grasshopper. Success! The chameleon snapped it up. A great National Geographic moment - if only I had thought to grab my camera.
Of these little events is our entertainment made.
Meanwhile, in Chuiba, the wire-tailed swallows are lining up in ever-increasing numbers, like beads strung on a necklace of electricity lines, gathering and preparing for the great flight North. Cue cooler weather for us, and warmer weather for most of you.
Labels: Pemba life
R.A.I.N.
The rain it raineth in my car
And also on my kitchen table,
But mainly in my car because
My sunroof is a touch unstable.
(With apologies to whoever penned the original, funnier, version)
Having a pretty intense rainy season again this year.
Labels: Pemba life, rain
Just and bit of an update
Hmm, not doing very well in keeping this blog up to date, am I? It's been a month since the last post, and what have the Phillips-Marques clan been up to? Much of the usual as it would turn out.
Joaquim's doing well at school; his report card for last term mentioned an exceptional ability in maths for his age. I think it's a bit early to be proclaiming him a maths genius, but it's certainly his favourite activity after drawing. His drawings are great: full of dinosaurs, boats, planes, aliens (not usually all together), very dynamic and detailed. Sebastian has also discovered that he can draw. It all started with planes - still an abiding obsession - which continue to be his favourite subject, but he's branched out into cars, dinosaurs and stick people. Our fridge is that stereotypical item of a young family's household: an exhibition of frequently changing, many-hued young people's artwork. I love it!
Paulo is as always busy on many fronts, but especially pouring lots of time and energy into the houses in Chuiba. They're really coming together, and we're hopeful that we may have two or three finished by the New Year. Many compliments have come our way, and we think they look pretty good. It occurs to me that I should post some photos...
I am fattening up nicely, a combination of slack tummy muscles and a desperate chocolate craving. Number three is a busy child, wriggling and kicking and generally making its presence felt on a regular basis. I'm in that happy window between the nausea and prodigious burping which characterised the first three months of this pregnancy (completely unlike either of the previous two), and the last three in which I will inevitably be huge, lumbering, and hot. Why do I always time my pregnancies so perfectly so as to coincide with the hottest time of the year here? Have I not learned my lesson? Oh well, bit late now.
Been spending time on Ibo. Last week I was there for a few days, discussing the community camp on neighbouring Matemo island with a possible investor. I hope it works out. The camp is in a beautiful spot, and has huge potential. As I flew back I saw breaching humpback whales from the air for the first time. They were tiny, little white tic-tacs leaping from the water and causing a huge splash. We've been lucky enough to see lots of whale activity from the shore this year, even Joaquim and Sebastian got a good view the other week-end and were suitably impressed. It's an astonishing sight, no matter how many times you see it: this huge creature rearing out of the water almost to its full 14 or 16 metres, 60 or so tons of whale flesh shooting up into the air then falling in apparent slow motion into a pure white explosion of foam. Definitely one of the highlights of the year.
Another of which is of course the season of the beloved mango, officially opened with the consumption of my first two yesterday.
Marvellous
Aromatic
Nectar-filled
Glorious
Orange-fleshed food of the gods. Sigh.
Labels: Ibo, Joaquim, mangoes, Paulo, Pemba life, Sebastian, waxing lyrical, working mum
A Makonde "Just So Story"
How the toad got his belly.
One day a father toad and his son were in the forest. The father told his son to wait for him in the shade of a tree while he went out hunting for lunch.
As the little toad waited a man walked past. The toad had never seen a man and was astonished at his size. Afraid and in awe, he crouched in the shadows silently and waited for the monster to pass.
When his father returned he told him that a huge creature, the like of which he had never seen, had passed by while he was gone.
"How big was he?" asked his father. "As big as me?"
"No, much bigger," replied the son.
"This big?" asked his father, puffing himself up.
"Bigger!"
"This big?" puffing himself up further.
"Bigger still!"
"This big?" puffing himself up as far as he could.
"Even bigger! He was enormous!" replied the little toad.
But when his father tried to deflate himself, he found that he was stuck, and that is how the toad got his belly.
(Told me by a Makonde artist as I admired his block prints at an arts and crafts fair last week. I was looking at an illustration of this tale.)
Labels: Pemba life
Rat in my washing?
We have installed a washing machine. OK, OK, I know this is not big news for most of you, but it's quite something in our household, especially for Aina, who has been doing all our washing by hand for the last 5 years (that's two babies' worth of nappies for a start).
My favourite feature? "Rat cover (optional)."
Labels: Pemba life
Boom, shake shake shake the room
This morning as we had breakfast what felt like a huge explosion shook our house and vibrated in our chests, leaving us shaken in more ways than one. We looked at each other astonished, and for the first time in my life I realised to some extent just how horrific it must be to experience a true bombardment. Gaza, Afghanistan, Iraq, my God, the Blitz. No wonder my grandmother used to hide in the downstairs loo during thunder storms.
Happily, it turns out it was the army on training exercises nearby and not some undiscovered ordinance accidentally dug up at the building site down the road.
Scary.
Labels: Pemba life
Headless chicken
Or blue-arsed fly. Either way, that's been me over the last month or so. And on Monday I'm off to India for 10 days. So all my good intentions of posting photos of Sebastian and Joaquim and Paulo's birthdays and my latest birding trip with Malcolm have gone out the window.
So see you all in a couple of weeks when I shall endeavour to make good!
Labels: birds, birthdays, Joaquim, Paulo, Pemba life, Sebastian, working mum
Wheeeeeeee
Some friends have just returned from South Africa with what may be Pemba's first Wii. I am emphatically not a computer game person. However, today I'm aching all over from tennis, bowling and baseball, where by my own reckoning I scored moderately, reasonably and undeniably direly. It's absolutely brilliant!
Labels: Pemba life
Seafood/soulfood
Although Paulo has been in Maputo for nearly two weeks and as a result I have been trying to coordinate dropping and picking up the boys at two different schools at two different times, all household and staff issues, shopping, car maintenance, carpenter supervision, thatch ordering, and DIY veterinary treatment for one of the dogs who has been fighting and has a huge hole in his neck, as well as putting in the occasional appearance at work, I shouldn’t really complain.
At the week-end, taking advantage of a bank holiday, the boys and I hitched a ride in a stylish fishing boat (no sarcasm, this is a serious game fishing boat not a local dhow) to Sito, a simple yet lovely beach lodge about 30km up the coast, where we were spoiled rotten by our hosts Craig and Tessa. Alongside the swimming and snorkeling, delicious food and generous sun-downer cocktails, we were treated to not one but three dolphin sightings, much to the boys’ (and my) delight. The last of these was on an otherwise unsuccessful fishing trip, when a large pod of spinner dolphins (small and fast) came to the boat and swam with us for about 5 minutes, weaving in and out of the bow-wave, hopping over wavelets, passing bits of sea-weed from flipper to tail to flipper, seeming to check us out as intently as we – hanging over the bow about one metre above them – were them.
It was magical, and the three days away from Pemba were a life-saver for me, as my fuse was burning dangerously low.
“I think we should stay for years and years,” said Joaquim. I have to say, it was very tempting.
That was written two weeks ago, since when our interment connection has been so bad I haven’t been able to post anything at all. Paulo is back from Maputo, and we’ve been back to Sito, where at about 7.30 on Saturday morning we were doing this:
If it’s not immediately obvious to you what this is, look carefully under Paulo’s elbow: you will see the liquid eye of an enormous green turtle.
It had been caught in a fishing net; on purpose or by accident is unclear, but what is quite clear is that it was heading for the pot had we not arrived on the scene.
I won’t go through it blow by blow, but it was an utterly thrilling experience, both for Paulo and me who were actually disentangling the poor creature, and for the boys (including Joauqim's best friend Milan), who were astonished at the sheer size of it, and must have imagined that sea turtles were something like land tortoises: “it’s giant! It’s huge!” And it was: the shell alone was at least a metre long, the head almost the size of a rugby ball. An informed diver friend who saw the photos estimated it to be about 200 years old.
Sadly, many turtles are still being hunted and consumed in the waters around Pemba and inside the Park. All the fishermen are aware that it is illegal, but enforcement is weak (especially outside the park). Of course it’s difficult for people who have hunted these animals for generations to understand that – through no fault of their own – turtle populations have reached such a critically low mass that every individual counts. It is unfair that while long-liners and drift netters account for thousands of turtle deaths each year and are not penalized for it, local fishermen who are principally aiming to feed their (hungry) families are bearing the brunt of conservation initiatives. But looking into that animal’s dark eye, feeling the tug as it freed its last flipper from the net and armed with the knowledge that for every 1000 turtle hatchlings only one reaches adulthood, I can only hope that our efforts to protect these amazing animals to the best of our abilities are as successful as they could possibly be.
PS: Our dog is much better, thanks.
Labels: environment, Pemba life, working mum
Happy holidays
When your friends think you may have died it's definitely time to post something.
We had a family-tastic Christmas and New Year, with a wonderful visit from my parents and sister - you know, the once struggling author who talks too much. Feel free to pop over to her blog for an envy-inspiring pic of the beach we were on at New Year's. I really must add to her eulogy that Nkwichi Lodge was without a doubt one of the loveliest places I have had the pleasure to stay in. The boys loved the jungle adventure mixed with fabulous beach, Joaquim discovered to his delight the joys of swimming underwater with a mask (aided by the presence of hundreds of multi-coloured and very tame fishies in the crystal clear water), and Paulo and I found it hugely relaxing (no mobile phone reception, for one, how blissful is that?). All-round a big thumbs-up. Aside from that there was the usual present frenzy at Christmas, the highlight of which for me was Sebastian's reaction to my urging him to open his other presents after he found an all-singing all-dancing Lightning McQueen at the bottom of his stocking: "I don't need that, I just need this!" (He has barely let it our of his sight since, he sleeps with the big hunk of plastic, bless his cotton socks.) Great Super-Maman Christmas lunch: turkey and trimmings and chocolate roulade (if you ain't tasted it you ain't lived), and all the rest.
Since then it's been back to work, where I have a new member in my team; we are now three (my management skills are being stretched). He is taking over responsibility for the community-based tourism projects, leaving me freer to concentrate on other stuff, like strategic tourism planning and working more closely with the operators and er, blogging. He seems promising.
For Joaquim, Monday was his first day at "The Big School". He has been counting down the days, so excited is he at joining his best friend Milan and the other big kids there. He was so confident and happy, waving me away with barely a glance as he showed off his new exercise book and pencil to his teacher that I was filled with a warm glow of pride. Sebastian is back at nursery next week, which he is equally keen on, but meanwhile has been kept busy playing with his new best friend, Samuel. And what a beautiful pair they make.
Labels: food, Joaquim, Pemba life, Sebastian, sisters
Curtains
Like Gandalady, I have just received Joaquim's end of year report. Among other nice things, it says that "he is happy to perform before others". Well, that was not in evidence last night at his second end-of-year school play. Last year he was supposed to play a shark, refused to go on, and then sobbed inconsolably when he realised he had missed his chance. This year he was supposed to be the narrator, refused to go on, and was not particularly phased when his teacher had to step in. I suppose that's progress. It would seem he's just not cut out for the stage, but on the way home he recited his part perfectly.
Sebastian, however, participated gleefully. He was a monkey; how apt.
Labels: Joaquim, Pemba life, Sebastian
Got to fly.
Well I know you're all dying to know whether I was successful in my appeal in the case of the tinted windows, but unfortunately I've been too busy to go and check. (I should mention the value of the fine at this point: about $8.) And as I'm off to the bush tomorrow for 12 days birding with Malcolm, you'll just have to hang in there a little longer. Ta-ra.
Labels: birds, Pemba life
The plot thickens
As I'm not one to take these things lying down, I went to the department of roads and asked them to alter my car documents so that they say I have tinted windows. Which they cannot do because they are stick-on, not tinted glass, as verified by the polite young man who is dealing with me.
"OK, so the police say they must appear on my documents and you say they can't, what do I do?"
"Take them off," replies the young man.
"But I like them! They provide shade for my children. Is it illegal?"
"No, it's not illegal."
"Then I'm not going to take them off!"
"But then the police will hassle you."
"So can you put them on the documents?"
"No."
By then we are back in the office and I ask to see the Highway Code, to see what is says about tinted windows. My fine says I am in breach of article 38/3. Article 38/3, I discover, refers to the correct nomenclature for motorcycles under 50cc. I am appealing.
Labels: Pemba life
The rough with the smooth
It's Saturday, I'm a bit bleary-eyed after a later-than-usual Friday night and an earlier-than-usual wake-up call from the boys, and I'm on my way to a meeting at work with representatives of our major donor, AFD. So you could call my mood middling. I'm driving around the ringroad, which follows the shore line into Pemba Bay proper when a huge splash catches my eye,and there's only one thing that can cause a splash like that:
Immediate upgrading of my mood to excellent. How often do you get to watch humpback whales breaching, visible to the naked eye? One good reason to love living in Pemba.
2 minutes later I am flagged down by the traffic police. My car is 100% legal, I imported it myself and everything works. My driving license is valid, never besmirched by an offence. I am fined for having dark windows in the back, which should - apparently - appear on my documents. Immediate downgrading of my mood to slightly pissed off. I've been driving this car for over 2 years without anyone ever saying anything about the dark windows. I could surely have been given a warning and told to have my car documents altered. I grit my teeth, refuse to offer a bribe, accept the fine. The fine is small, mood returns to middling. On my way home I shall take the ringroad and look for whales.
That's Pemba all over!
Labels: Pemba life
Kite surfing in paradise
We have just had a fantastic week-end. Our good friends Carlo and Suzanna, owner-managers of the beautiful Il Pirata and Pirate Kites in Murrebue, hosted the Pemba Open: Mozambique's first ever kite-surfing competition. Anyone who knows me will be able to confirm that I am not an avid sports fan. I just about do World Cup footie and the opening ceremony of the Olympics. But this was different: 18 kiters from Pemba, Maputo, France and South Africa, a beautiful beach, an enthusiastic crowd, and - on Sunday at least - perfect conditions: 20 notts of windpower and a bright blue sky to set off the colourful kites. There were high jumps, long jumps, fancy tricks, spectacular wipe-outs, speed, foam and lots of laughs. The deserving freestyle winner was a local friend's cousin on holiday, but the Pemba crew did themselves justice by winning the course race, the "king of the air" (most time in the air) and heading up the "loosers' group" in freestyle. It was all very good-natured and loads of fun for competitors and spectators alike. Even the boys, when not playing with the gang of feral kids who roamed around to their hearts' content, were impressed: "Big jump! Biiiiig jump!" cried Sebastian, whilst Joaquim delightedly shook hands with the winner and offered his congratulations when we met him in the showers afterwards. He asked us two dozen times afterwards who the winner had been, just to make sure he had actually met him. Perfect pizza, camping under the trees and a damn good coffee at breakfast dotted the i's and crossed the t's. Couldn't have been better. We're looking forward to receiving 40 kiters next year...
If I were a bit cleverer I would post their website here (need a tutorial from my siter again), but it's: wwwdotmurrebuedotcom. Have a look. Will post photos when I have some.
Labels: kites, Pemba life, waxing lyrical
