VHG26

Hello again!

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

Yes, back to the beginning of when we started this blog. Well, not really back, just a similar situation Since I arrived in Mozambique.

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