28/06/12

            Liz, Anna’s friend from home, is here visiting! A few days ago we went into Maputo so that we could leave early in the morning for the beach. We were standing at a bus stop in the city when I felt a gentle tug on my hair. I turned around and gave the woman standing behind me a quizzical look. “It looks like extensions, I wanted to see if it was” she explained to me. “Well that’s not a compliment!” was my response, even though she assured me repeatedly it was.

            We piled onto an over-stuffed chapa, the kind where you are more dependent on other people’s bodies to keep you upright, rather than your ability to grab handholds or maintain your balance. We were finally able to get Liz a seat, so we felt better after that, until the young man next to her took a picture of her with his phone. “Hey!” yelled Anna “what are you doing? You can’t take pictures of people you don’t know! Give me your phone, I’m erasing that!” She grabbed for his phone but he pulled it out of reach so we turned to the woman sitting next to him and asked her to monitor him to verify that he actually deleted the picture. The other woman sitting in their row started loudly scolding him about how rude and uncultured he had been. Then the man standing next to me started loudly scolding him and addressing the bus about how he had taken a picture of Liz and how rude he was. Within 30 seconds everyone on the bus was talking about it. The young man called for a stop and got off as everyone scolded him, and I wondered to myself whether he actually needed to get out there, or if he had been shamed into it.

            We went up to Casa de Mar for a few fantastic days at the beach with Mary and Des, the wonderful people who own it. (Check out www.casademar.co.za if you ever want to visit an amazing beach in Mozambique!) We got to spend time talking to them, reading, playing card games, and watching the sunrise—exactly how beach days should be spent (it’s “winter” here, so warm enough for swimsuits, but too cold to get in the water).

The sun rises within about 15 minutes here

You can almost see the sun moving, it's incredible