Meeting with Dr Cuamba

Oh my, so much has happened in the past few days I don't know where to start. So I'll start where I last left you. Or where I think I left you.

We were just about to move. We left Natural Centre and our room there for our new life in an apartment on Avenida Vladimir Lenine (all streets have names of communist leaders here since the communist times...) in central Maputo. And it is fantastic. We have our own room with a fan helping to keep us cool during the night. A functional kitchen. A balcony. A roof which you can climbe up on and look out on Maputo. We even have a washing machine! And free Internet.

Part of our room

Kajsa making lunch

The balcony

Putting up mosquito nets

And every morning when we pull away the curtain a nice looking Mozambican man is smiling using his cellphone. Very typical for Mozambique.

The apartment also offers social life in the form of Lea and Tibaud, a French couple that teaches us how life works around here. And gives us an opportunity to speak French. This means that we speak more French than English at the moment (and Kajsa is doing so good! I am super impressed). Lea also speaks very good Portuguese so she has promised to teach us some if we help here improve her English.

We have met a lot of interesting people so far and mixed languages like crazy. This Saturday Lea and Thibaud invited a French burlesque singer, Fanny and a French friend and his Mozambican friend. The Mozambican girl did not speak French, and Thibaud does not speak English so we ended up mixing everything. Lovely as always.

On Sunday we went with our Frenchies to Catembe on the other side of the river and walked along the beach and then ate very nice shrimps once again.

Kajsa, Lea and Thibaud

Me and Thibaud

This week started with some work for the project and we tried our interview questions with me as interviewer and Kajsa as the person getting interviewed and it worked fine. All we need to make sure is that we don't have too many questions.

We'd heard rumors of a Norweigian guy being in Maputo to do a project on small scale hydro from a woman working at NORAD (Norwegian foreign aid) and we sent him an e-mail this morning. This town is not big enough for the both of us kind of :)

Finally, we got to meet our contact at Universidade de Eduardo Mondlane, Dr Boaventura Cuamba. A short, kind man who seemed very interested in our work. He called this morning and talked to Kajsa and asked where we lived so we could meet. Kajsa said that "Isn't it better if we meet at the university?" and we set the time. After walking for 45 minutes in the heat we reached the university and was met by this man. And, he also had had contact with Andreas, the Norwegian and was now about to go get him at his guesthouse. And now, we realised that we too could have got a lift from where we live to the university! I guess it's good we like exercising.

The meeting was very good. We have a new one tomorrow with a German company that have some projects on small-scale hydro and they will give us some updates on the situtation. All of a sudden it feels like we are getting somewhere!

I will end this with a few sentences about Maputo. For me this capital is quieter than I thought. Compared to Asian cities there are less people and less noise. People feel a bit more suspicious at first, but seem very interested once they have decided that you are ok. And they seem like they have  a lot of fun going on. The city center is small enough to walk through and there are parks and people selling fruit in every corner. Every once in a while you pass a bunch of people standing and waiting, for what it seems no reason. These are places where the chapas, the local minibuses, stop. Once the bus arrives it always fills up to a maxmum number of people and then a few more miraculously squeeze in.

All in all, life is good at the moment! We send you a greeting from the beach near the Fish Market.