27/12/09

Happy 29th birthday mama ;)! Stayed the night in Maxixe after meeting up with Jon, Donna, Luis, and Ann at Tofo beach yesterday. I got to meet Mulungu and Amendoin (foreigner and peanut in Portuguese, respectively), Donna and Ann’s new puppies, so named because Mulungu is white and Amendoin is light brown. We washed them with tick and flea shampoo and spent about an hour afterwards picking the dead ticks and fleas off each one. It was disgusting, are there more ticks and fleas here? Met a South African family today who has been friends with our head sister forever. He actually knows her from Namaacha (where we had our pre-service training) where his parents own the hotel and casino in town. They have lived in Mozambique on and off (they returned to South Africa for the kid’s schooling) for over 30 years, and speak fluent Portuguese. It was interesting to meet people who had actually made the effort to learn Portuguese and integrate into the culture, and to listen to them talk about how many times they have gotten fed up with living in a less developed country like Mozambique, but how they can never leave because they love the people here and so many other things about this country.