A winter in Vilankulo

And here are the latest news from Moz.
I started writing some of the articles in July but the season got quite busy and many things happened very quickly (which in the country of extreme slowliness is quite funny) so I had to stop until everything got a little bit quieter.
Here are some short stories. Not all are out breaking news but they are a window on my Moz life.

A winter in Vilankulo…
While you’re desperately trying to get some tan one the Italian, Spanish or Riviera beaches our winter starts.
It starts slowly slowly around mid-June.
Temperatures start decreasing. During the day it’s still quite warm (around 24-25 degrees Celsius).
It’s in the evenings and underwater that we can really feel the cold.
Evenings are chilly (around 12-13 degrees) and underwater temperature can go down to 22-21 degrees.
Divers will immediately know that when you dive everyday and you want to stay in between 50 and 60 minutes underwater it’s very cold.
This means you have to find ways not to suffer! And the only thing to do is to go for the winter collection… see picture! Not very sexy but definitely recommended.
What’s nice though is that unlike what happens in Europe, winter doesn’t last forever.
We’re mid-November now and the temperature at noon is 37 degrees…
bye bye the ugly winter wet-suit… welcome to the nice and a little bit more fashionable tops!

Winter animals.
Let’s face it, water is cold and diving a little bit less comfortable but it’s really worth going out.
This year has been superb.
A quick look at the pictures and you’ll know why!
We had so many chances to see humpback whales.
How to explain the emotion you get the first time you can admire these massive mammals from so close you have the impression you’ll be able to touch them.
3 of them came as close as 15 metres away from the boat and stayed with us for 10 minutes, going up and down and teasing us. It was so beautiful, I was about to cry.
And even better… during a dive on the reef we dive the most, a humpback came and visited us. She didn’t stay long… just a few seconds, but she was right above our heads, not more than 4-5 metres above. The 4 divers I was with and I will never forget that one.
And we also had lots of devil rays, manta rays, dolphins…
So again… yes it’s cold, but you don’t want to miss those ones!

From the wet-suit to the apron…
Because my new life as a diver was not enough any more and because I was tired of my non-sexy wet-suit, I decided to put that one in the cupboard and change it for an apron.
Since the 1st of September I’m running a lovely guest house here in Vilankulo, Zombie Cucumber.
The owners of the place – Steph and Jon – had to go back to the UK for a few months and asked me to run the place while they were away.
It’s a tiny tidy place with 4 bungalows for 2 people and a dorm with 9 beds.
Everything is built around a lovely garden and a swimming pool.
It works as what we would call a Maison d’Hotes in France. Meaning that every evening we cook a dinner based on what we could find at the market (choice is usually between 2 dishes… I’m trying to put 3 on the menu from time to time) and everybody has dinner together.
I do the books and the cooking.
If you have some very good specialties you want me to try, please feel free to send me the recipes. I’m looking for new stuff to do every day!

New home and new family!
With this guest house thing, we had to move to live on site.
We now have a very nice little house, far more comfortable that the other one… just missing the sea-view. But the beach is 2 minutes away and I go down there quite often to walk the dogs on the beach.
DOGSSSSS.
We already had a beautiful husky.
A « random » dog – Villain - joined us when we were still living at the dive centre and decided he would never leave us anymore.
And Molly and Fred were living at Zombie Cucumber.
So here we are, with our 4 dogs who happily share their space with the super cat we decided we needed at the dive centre to chase rats and mice away...
Let me introduce you to Huxley (the husky), Villain (the little foxy one), Fred (the small black), Molly (the princess of the place) and Piou Piou/Zoltane, the new members of my family.

Land land land !
And to complete the « settlement » we are now, after 14 months of a long and strenuous process, the happy owners of a beautiful plot of land on the beach where to build a new dive centre and a house for us.
14 months might seem quite long but since we are in Mozambique and we had to buy from a South-African cow boy, we chose to be super prudent.
If you had heard as many stories as we did about people buying plots already sold 2 or 3 times or not for sale at all or not constructible because it’s an archaeological site I’m sure these 14 months start making sense.
And if I add that it took 4 months to the owner to show us a piece of paper proving that he was the owner of the plot?
And also that the initial plot had an L shape… after visiting it with the guys from the municipality we discovered the small side of the L was not in the land?
And finally that the size of the plot went from 3500 sqm (announced by the owner) to 1000 sqm (measurements done by the municipality) and in the end, after verification, 4000 sqm? Yeah... this is the real Mozambican adventure!!!
It seems that all the papers are ok and that the land is really 4000 sqm… but, a few days ago we went to start measuring everything in order to start making proper sketches to start building and we discovered that the neighbour was building a hut on our land and that he had also proper papers saying that part of our land is his.
So here we go… we’ll have to fight and start again from the beginning. So cool!!!!

Elections here and there.
The municipal elections are scheduled on the 19th of November. 2 parties are fighting (2 historical ones): FRELIMO, government’s party, the one who fought for independence and RENAMO who fought the FRELIMO during the civil war.
The first one is (was) communist, supported by the soviets and the Chinese; the second, supported by South-Africa, the USA and all the other opponents to the communism.
It’s quite difficult today to understand the ideological differences between them.
As far as I understood it’s more a question of generation.
FRELIMO being supported by all those who still have in mind the fight against the Portuguese and RENAMO supported by a younger generation who is tired of a government who cares more about its own interests than about developing the country.
This is definitely a very simplistic point of view and not sure it’s very accurate but unfortunately my Portuguese is still not good enough to read the papers and get a better understanding of the political situation here.
In Vilankulo, the game is already won by the mayor – M. Suleimane – who has been the head of town for the last 8 years. He is supported by the FRELIMO. The RENAMO’s candidate doesn’t look like he has good chances.
No polls here… the indications come from the number of cars covered in one or the other party’s posters and candidates pictures’, that go up and down town horning and with all the people at the back screaming and singing.
The more you have the better chances to win!