Short stories n°2
It’s the season so let’s go… happy new year to all of you.
We’ve just gone through our first “South-African” season. It’s been quite hectic for a few days… just had the impression that all of South-Africa had run to Mozambique for one week… as they all wanted to dive we’ve been working quite a lot and finally put some money into our bank account. If only one of the tubes of our rubber duck hadn’t decided to break during one of our trips it would have been even better… but at least some of our customers had quite an adventurous day!
As 2 years ago when I was in Asia, I really enjoyed my Christmas and new year in the tropics (apologies to my family), far away from the shopping hysteria and the vows of our politicians (by the way, how was Sarkozy’s speech? I heard that he is shagging Carla Bruni ??? seen from here it’s quite funny and definitely pathetic…)
Before starting with the Mozambican stories, one news : I’ll be back in Paris from March the 4th to March the 25th. My schedule : hair-dresser, manicure, pedicure and seeing as many of you as I can… plus some movies and if anyone knows about something nice to book at the theatre, at the opera or about new restaurants and bars, let me know…
And here are some new short stories about our life here... again!
Wild animals, #2
Not as present in the holidays catalogues as the other ones, they are the ones that are part of our everyday life.
During the last month, we had very nice visits at our place:
- scorpions : we found 3 of different sizes. The first one and the biggest was nicely standing in the middle of our “living room”. I almost walked on it…. The other 2, smaller, we found in the wet-suits we provide to our divers... no one got hurt and, as per today, those 3 very nice animals make their life in some pots and we feed them with some of the tics we find in the hair of our dog.
- 3 very nice snakes : one next to the swimming pool, one sleeping in a BCD we were disintegrating to get spare parts and the last one, again, in the middle of our living room, right under Denis’ foot… We still don’t know exactly what they were but for sure no cobra or boa… I’ve been very brave !
- I’ve been far less brave when I found the 5 mice that decided to live in our bedroom… when I discovered them I ran away screaming as an old lady in a cartoon ! what happened is that we started noticing that so me of our supplies (bread, potato, fruit…) where getting eaten at nigh by some rodent. Our investigation brought us to look behind a foam mattress that we were storing behind our desk. One morning, I decide to remove it in order to do a big cleaning… very good idea! The mattress was full of holed, there was foam everywhere and all the mouse family standing in the middle of this mess. Denis managed to catch a baby one that we released in the countryside, very far away from our place. The other ones??? No idea... one is apparently still hanging around and gives us terrible headaches at night running everywhere but she’s visiting less often at present. I sincerely hope she will find another home very soon….
- Last but not least, we recently found a huge spider… beautiful and apparently harmless… I am starting to getting used to this kind of African surprises, but I remain cautious…
- And yesterday I got bitten by a nasty moray eel… she didn’t really appreciate my playing with her!!!
- scorpions : we found 3 of different sizes. The first one and the biggest was nicely standing in the middle of our “living room”. I almost walked on it…. The other 2, smaller, we found in the wet-suits we provide to our divers... no one got hurt and, as per today, those 3 very nice animals make their life in some pots and we feed them with some of the tics we find in the hair of our dog.
- 3 very nice snakes : one next to the swimming pool, one sleeping in a BCD we were disintegrating to get spare parts and the last one, again, in the middle of our living room, right under Denis’ foot… We still don’t know exactly what they were but for sure no cobra or boa… I’ve been very brave !
- I’ve been far less brave when I found the 5 mice that decided to live in our bedroom… when I discovered them I ran away screaming as an old lady in a cartoon ! what happened is that we started noticing that so me of our supplies (bread, potato, fruit…) where getting eaten at nigh by some rodent. Our investigation brought us to look behind a foam mattress that we were storing behind our desk. One morning, I decide to remove it in order to do a big cleaning… very good idea! The mattress was full of holed, there was foam everywhere and all the mouse family standing in the middle of this mess. Denis managed to catch a baby one that we released in the countryside, very far away from our place. The other ones??? No idea... one is apparently still hanging around and gives us terrible headaches at night running everywhere but she’s visiting less often at present. I sincerely hope she will find another home very soon….
- Last but not least, we recently found a huge spider… beautiful and apparently harmless… I am starting to getting used to this kind of African surprises, but I remain cautious…
- And yesterday I got bitten by a nasty moray eel… she didn’t really appreciate my playing with her!!!
Collateral business : what do we do when we’re not diving ?
We have a very good reputation in the surroundings which means that many people come along and ask for our help for many things but diving…
- we are ambulance drivers : one of our specialties is now to drive our customers our neighbours to the hospital. At any time of the day or night… the best has been a phone call at 2.17 am from one of our staff who asked us to drive his girlfriend’s father to the hospital… “I think I have malaria...”, “I’m worrying about my son’s foot….”, one of our customers who fell while jumping on the boat and thought she has broke her back (but she could still walk…), etc… The net take out for me is that, as a result, I know all the guys working at the hospital… never know… might be helpful one day!
- We are a bank: this is it.. we are white so we have money… therefore we can lend money to everyone. We started doing it with our staff (we can take it out from their wages so this is not a big deal) but after that we started having anyone coming at our place and asking for loans… we’ve learnt how to say no quite quickly otherwise we would be broke.
- We’re an outfit shop! We had very nice t-shirts made for ourselves, our staff and to sell to the divers. One day after the first one was on our skipper’s shoulders, it’s been a continuous “Hey, my friend, give me a t-shirt…” anywhere in town!
- And we’re a weather forecast station… Everyone seems to know that we very regularly check the weather on the internet in order to know if we can go out and with which boat. Which means that anyone comes at our place in order to know what’s the weather will be like tomorrow, the day after tomorrow or for their next holidays! And generally this happens while we’re having lunch or dinner… I love it…
- we are ambulance drivers : one of our specialties is now to drive our customers our neighbours to the hospital. At any time of the day or night… the best has been a phone call at 2.17 am from one of our staff who asked us to drive his girlfriend’s father to the hospital… “I think I have malaria...”, “I’m worrying about my son’s foot….”, one of our customers who fell while jumping on the boat and thought she has broke her back (but she could still walk…), etc… The net take out for me is that, as a result, I know all the guys working at the hospital… never know… might be helpful one day!
- We are a bank: this is it.. we are white so we have money… therefore we can lend money to everyone. We started doing it with our staff (we can take it out from their wages so this is not a big deal) but after that we started having anyone coming at our place and asking for loans… we’ve learnt how to say no quite quickly otherwise we would be broke.
- We’re an outfit shop! We had very nice t-shirts made for ourselves, our staff and to sell to the divers. One day after the first one was on our skipper’s shoulders, it’s been a continuous “Hey, my friend, give me a t-shirt…” anywhere in town!
- And we’re a weather forecast station… Everyone seems to know that we very regularly check the weather on the internet in order to know if we can go out and with which boat. Which means that anyone comes at our place in order to know what’s the weather will be like tomorrow, the day after tomorrow or for their next holidays! And generally this happens while we’re having lunch or dinner… I love it…
South-Africans on holidays
Apparently in between Christmas and New Year’s it’s an absolute rush to Mozambique and its beautiful beaches (they say that some people queue for 12 hours at the border)!
We’ve been lucky, all the South-Africans we’ve been dealing with were pretty normal and very nice people. Nevertheless they have quite a bad reputation, apparently quite justified.
I know the following will sound like a big generality, but here are a few examples :
- A South-African doesn’t leave for holidays without bringing absolutely all his house with him : food for 15 days in massive cooler boxes, his own generator, his boat, his dive gear including cylinders and weights, his fishing stuff, his kayak, his tent, etc. as a result, he doesn’t spend a penny in the country and creates incredible traffic jams with his overloaded 4x4 and trailer.
- South-Africans are quite noisy… of course, when you think they start drinking beer at 7am… you can imagine how loud they speak at 12 !
- South-Africans are quite generous and nice (in their country they are very welcoming) and expect everyone else to be as they are… 3 times we’ve been asked if we could provide the GPS points of our dive sites… I don’t think they took into consideration one second that those points are part of our business and therefore of our revenues! And also, if they come and ask us to refill dive tanks for them, they look quite surprised if we do not do them a discount because some of the tanks are only half empty….
Restaurant ***
It often happens that some fisherman stops us on the beach and offers us some nice seafood : crabs, mussels, clams, etc. We recently bought 2 beautiful crabs… but in irder to be able to eat them we had to find very “local” solutions!
What’s Vilankulo like?
Thanks to my parents who came to visit us for 1 month, I finally have some pictures of the place I live…
Here are a few pictures….
Life looks really difficult here!
Hope I will be able to tell more stories when I’ll see you the next time…