Denmark is home but living abroad changes your look on your home country; makes you value some things and miss others. Sometimes it even brings you closer to answer the big question: What is Denmark? 

And here it is. My personal Denmark:

1. The all-important stuff: we have an amazing health care system, minimum corruption and free educationeveryone is entitled more than one chance to break free of their social heritage. Not saying that everyone is a 100 % equal or that you’ll never meet injustice in DK. This exists everywhere but in Denmark we are exceptionally lucky.

In Mozambique I did not necessarily trust the police. Every time you saw them you feared a struggle. Maybe they’d ask for your ID that you’d hopefully remembered. Maybe they’d claim you’d broken some law that you most certainly didn’t realise breaking. And they could be bought. How can you trust someone who you know are that easily swayed by money? Not everyone in Denmark favour the police – and I am sure even the policemen make mistakes – that is a trait of the human being after all. But here I do not fear meeting them and I trust that they try keeping the peace instead of just striving to get more money.

Some survey has declared that the Danes are some of the happiest people in the world. I will not argue whether that is true or not. But one thing Denmark is, is safety. And being safe is a good foundation for being happy.

2. The little tiny things: When I return to Denmark, some of the first things I do is buy some good liqourice, eat some dark bread and maybe I even drink a glass of milk while I turn on the TV and relax on the couch. It’s the smallest things that can make you feel home. Those little things that you take for granted when you’re home and miss terribly when you’re away.

These are the reasons we all get somewhat more aware of our national heritage when we live abroad. Let me give you an example: I have never really attended a so-called “julefrokost” (christmas lunch) in Denmark. At least not one with as much attention to the food traditions as the one I attended at the Danish residency in Mozambique. It seems somewhat absurd to eat risalamande and christmas cookies when it’s 30 degrees outside. But we do because we need that special home feeling in a place where everything is somewhat different from what we’re used to.

Denmark is the little traditions I can’t help but want and enjoy.

3. Those people: Of course, some things matter even more than all our privileges and little weird traditions. The one thing that always makes me want to return is the people waiting for me at home. So for me Denmark is most of all the people I know and cherish.

Returning in January to a freezing cold Danish winter is not a dance on roses. But then you meet up with some friends and family, get a job and get into that everyday rhythm and everything is not so bad after all.

- and (sincerely): it is like being back home…

The traffic feels allright, and using the horn for traffic communication feels normal. Holes in the pavement, people, beggars, street-sellers (of whatever) – (really: WHATEVER) feels normal, the prawns and beers taste just as good as they used to, and the heat and mosquitos are annoying as the will always be.

Tonight is what we know as small-christmas-eve. We had sundowners at some friends house and dinner at a sea-food restaurant. The kindness is great and service as normal. So all-in-all it’s like coming home.

Tomorrow is chritsmas eve for us scandinavians and we will go to a Hash (run/walk) and try to arrange some christmas dinner at home. Nimbus and Eva arranged a pigs steak (with skin!) at the local butcher, and I am planning to add some fresh mango to to menu somehow.

Maputo is not a place for spending your holiday, so most restaurants are closed over Christmas and new years, like there are not much to see or visit. But anyhow we enjoy being here for the holiday. There are a lot of concerts and plenty of cold beer in the almost unbearable heat. We’ll manage!

Marry Christmas to all of you and remember that it is not about the amount of stuff to consume, it’s about the amount of true love and sincere care to give and recieve.

Roger over from Maputo on a small-christmas-night.

(This post has nothing whatsoever to do with christmas. I just wanted to remind you in case anyone had forgotten how close we are to that wonderful time of the year)

So lots have happened since last time – which stalkers of my Facebook photos would now

House of Fire

First of all I was in Swaziland. Some of you might not know this country since it is rather small and closely related to South Africa, but just imagine a mountainous country with many cows and speed-bumps. No, truth be told it is a wonderful and beautiful country. The service is great, food is good and people are friendly. I stayed with a Swedish/American family at a farm with tons of animals: Horses, cats, dogs, peacocks. rabbits etc. We also visited House of Fire which is used for many concerts and events and the candle factory. I can only recommend that people visit Swaziland if they ever get to Mozambique or South Africa. It has lots to offer despite the small size.

Linnea as The Scary Teacher

Me as Sally (The Nightmare Before Christmas)

After Swaziland followed a rather peaceful time where I occupied myself at work with all the wonderful little kids I have there. We played with sand, played uno, got new toys, played with more sand, some lego as well and so on. And then of course we celebrated Halloween.

After this peaceful period begun a rather event-filled one. This period was kick-started with a Mozambican wedding of Lúcia (the daughter of Eugenio who works at the school) and Velario. All the teachers where invited and we learned that at a Mozambican wedding, happiness, dancing and singing are important ingredients.

The wedding started at the church (Where I wished I spoke more Portuguese) and continued with a car-procession through town to a couple of photo-shoot scenes with lots of honking and blinking. One of these scenes was a very popular park for weddings and with at least 10 weddings there it would have been easy to end up with the wrong wedding party… All the teachers managed to stay with the right one though… At last we were invited home to the family of the bride, had a Mozambican dinner and gave them our presents and wishes for a happy life. Take all this and add a lot of dancing and then you have the wedding.

The couple

Dancing

In the park

photo-shoot

Another place where you can find dancing is at the Maputo Train Station. This may sound rather odd but the train station actually has a bar and is a quite popular party venue. This weekend the Norwegians ministers of environment and International development have been visiting and the Norwegian embassy held a concert at the train station. So don’t think that parties can only be held at obvious locations

Before this I was at an art exhibition by a Mozambican artist, Ricardo. Wonderful paintings, indeed:

Now I only have one thing left to say:
Glædelig 1. søndag i advent!

1. You come to a trafficlight and realise that in your direction both the green and red light is on, whereas none of them are on in the other direction… Yes, this did happen in a pretty crowded trafficlight on the way home from a supermarket.. Sigh..

2. Garbage in the streets is not an uncommon thing to experience. Actually, a street without garbage would be more surprising.

3. The word “tragedy” is misspelt as “tradegy” on a memorial piece for Samora Machel apparently without anyone considering replacing it. This wasn’t strictly in Mozambique but in the Mozambican consulate in Nelspruit. I wish I had taken a picture of it but sadly I didn’t..

4. Random people on the street and other strangers greet you and speak to you. I guess that this is not really a Mozambican thing but more a “not Danish” thing. To clarify: In Denmark very few people just randomly talk to strangers… 

5. You’re in Africa but can’t find any wildlife like elephants, zebras and so on. The story goes that all the wildlife was shot and consumed during the civil war but whether that is true.. Hm…

6. Everyone takes monday off because a national holiday fell on a Sunday. Yes, most people have this monday off  because 25th of september (Sunday) is a holiday.. And hey, it’s not really fair to miss a holiday just because it’s on a sunday, right? 

7. You have a wonderful beach right by the city but can’t use it.. Or I guess you could – a lot of the locals do – but I’m just kind of picky when it comes to using a beach where all the waste from the sewer is dumped..

8. Your nearest neighbour is an (abandoned?) truck where a group of homeless people live.

Yes, that was a little part of Mozambique for you. This does make Mozambique sound awful which is not the truth of course.. I could have focused on the good things and mentioned the nice and friendly people, wonderful weather, awesome beaches up north and all the other nice parts of Mozambique. That wouldn’t have been as funny though..

This list was meant to be funny but especially the last point is actually quite sad. Even more so since one of the homeless people is only a little kid. I really hope this will change to the better in the future.

Crossing the border to and from Mozambique is all about how lucky you are. One day you might be the only one there with an effective and friendly cashier. But then anotherday you might end up in a line for more than an hour before being met by a cranky and ineffective cashier. At least, that is how it usually is…

Yesterday I was at one of those border crossings to South Africa because I had managed to catch a ride with one of the parents from the school… We came to the border and it was easy to see that it was one of those days. Those days where patience is required. Unfortunately, I didn’t think of taking a photo of the line but I am sure you can imagine it. Just imagine the line to a bookstore on the night where the 7th Harry Potter book was released (that might be exaggerating but you get the point..) Now, this line wasn’t moving very fast either so you could look firward to standing there for who knows how long..

However, yesterday was different and now we are at the “being VIP” part:

For some people lines don’t matter. For some people crossing the border is a piece of cake. For some people waiting is a non-existing.. And yesterday I got a little taste of how that is…How it is do be a….

(dumdumdumdum)

Diplomat!

…or drive through the border WITH a diplomat at least. Since they have their own counter, everything just becomes so much easier. To be fair though, we did have a bit of trouble.. They forgot to stamp my passport on one side of the border (the border is split into a Mozambiquan and South Africa one and you have to go through both – meaning more paper work and more risks of lines) so we had to go back.. Sigh… But hey, it wouldn’t really feel like Mozambique if everything had just been easy and perfect…

And here we have some pictures from the South African town, Komatipoort, where we made a quick stop before returning to Maputo:

A magazine with weapons next to one about children.. hm...

Coffee and donut

One last thing: Mozambique is hosting the All African Games during the next couple of weeks which is a sport event with all kinds of different sports (Cycling, soccer, swimming etc.) so kind of like the olympics but only for Africa (and not quite as important). They are very proud of this and it is all people are talking about at the moment. I might even see if I can go watch some of it.. But you’ll hear more about that in my next post

A bit more than a week has passed since I arrived here in Mozambique and I thought it was time for a status report and first impressions. Overall I must say that this week has been a good one and that I am positively surprised. I was a little bit unsatisfied with the weather in the beginning but now it is slowly starting to go back to that nice humid warmth that you just can’t get in DK. Ahhhhh.

The family that hosts me is great. They have been very welcoming and pleasant to be with. They live in a very nice one storey house (which is actually quite rare for the bigger houses in Maputo) that is very close to the school and the city centre. Seeing that we are so lucky that we live very close to some kind of minister’s residence (…) peacocks wander the area from time to time. Yesterday we even had one walking on top of our fence! (the one on the photo.. The lightning was unfortunately not very good…)

But of course I don’t spend all my time looking for peacocks.. I also have a volunteer job at the Scandinavian School to attend to. I must admit that I was kinda scared about this job since I haven’t worked with children before. And children, however small they are, can be very terrifying! So far it seems i’ve been lucky enough to only get the nice children and this first week of work hasn’t been bad at all. However, I am constantly surpised of how much energy kids can master. It seems that they never get tired or just want to lie down as us normal people…

While the children-case has still to be fully investigated I have discovered other startling things! Being the

nice person I am, I will now share these discoveries with you:

1. my hair is already getting big from the humidity and it is not even that humid yet… So in two month it will most likely be twice the size of my head…. Yay… -_-

2. (and now for the more groundbreaking-worldenlightening discovery) Mozambiquan cheese is actually very good for grilling in the microwave! Which it good since it doesn’t really tastes that good…

Don’t worry – your almost at the end of this blahblah’ing. I will just finish by adding that I was at an art-exhibition today at Nucleo de Arte – very nice actually – with a girl from the icelandic embassy. It’s very nice meeting new people because there are only a few left from ladt time I was here…

Now I’ll say goodnight since I have to start work at 7.30 AM tomorrow (crying silently inside myself)…

/Eva

When Africa is just perfect on a saturday afternoon

For those of you now wondering: “What is she doing in Mozambique now? I thought they moved back to Denmark a long time ago?” The answer is that I’m volunteering for half a year at the scandinavian school in Mozambique and living with a swedish family.

So far everything is wonderful! My “family” is very nice and welcoming, the weather is (of course) better than in Denmark (though not quite warm enough if you ask me) and Maputo is very alike what I remembered it. A few building has sprung up (or to be truthful: A few more half-finished buildings have sprung up).

However, some new and finished things can be seen in Mozambique as well. One of them being a park (old) wit ha restaurant (new). In this particular park you can be so lucky as to see one of the strangest sightings in all of Maputo. I’m not talking of exotic animals nor of colourful flowers. No, I am talking about lots of little scandinavian biking around the park as if they own the whole world. Maputo is not a  biking city nor is it inhabitants normally scandinavian but in this park the laws of nature seems to have been forgotten..

I was brought to the park by one of the contributors to this strange phenomenon, Daniela, who is the mum in the house where I live and she explained to me that the parents from the scandinavian school enjoy coming there and letting their children play. When looking at these children play together it almost seems like a little part of Scandinavia has been brought to Mozambique.

During this excursion into Mini-Scandinavia I ot to meet lots of parents and kids from the school and they luckily all seem very welcoming and nice which made me even more excited to start working monday.

Now I’ll go for dinner with some friends from last time I was here,

Will keep you posted,

Eva

“Why are we waiting, whyyy are we waaaiting, why are we waaaaiting, oh why, why, why… Whyyyyy are we waaiting, could be masterbaaating…” she sang embarrasingly, while I tried to look like I don’t know her and didn’t her, and at the same time was just about to explode in laughter.

Samba, marenge and strech.. and on our way out, she shouted CIRCLE UP and started: He’s the meanest!… I forced her  to leave the center, cross the road and come back home. Now she keeps circling up and she is craving beer, even though it is only Tuesday, and there are no beers on Tuesdays. But I’m sure she get a down-down in a moment. DOWN-DOWN in the drawer again!

But something is weird here… Sexy Sox doesn’t normally come out like this. It must be the extreme heat in DK or else… it might be her former hash-master that is close … coming closer….

EEiiiihhhhhh!