Hello, hello, is this thing on???? Imagine coming back to your blog almost ten years later. What do you find there? How does this thing even work? Can I use hashtags? I think I'll try to start back blogging. Stay tuned. #lesleyannnoel

Azure

So finally my Azure was born in December, and while I'm writing this note he's bouncing in my lap - almost three months old. People always ask me what's my son's name, how to pronounce it etc.

His name is Azure, pronounced Uh-zooo-ray, with the stress on the 'zooo' not the 'ray'. I didn't accent the 'e', because then people would put the stress in the wrong place. I know there is some intellectual snobbery linked to the pronunciation of the word 'azure in English, where 'people who know' say it's pronounced 'asia' not 'uh-zure', but his name is Ah-zoo-ray like 'blue ray' and 'Hip hip hooray!'

So where did this name come from? My easy answer is that it is a colour. Better yet, the name of the blue for the United Nations, which I found online. But he's actually named after somebody.

The boy in the photo is Azure, who was one of my unofficial guides while I was in the town of Bolgatanga in Northern Ghana. That Azure was thirteen but looked like he was ten. A bright boy, but very quiet and serious. In the 2 -3 days I spent with him, he didn't smile much, the smile in the photo was uncharacteristic. A melancholic boy with a beautiful name. One day to make him smile I told him that he had such a pretty name that I'd name my son after him. So said, so done. Three years later, I have my own little Azure a very happy, bouncing baby boy.

So the truth is I really don't know what his name means :-o I still give people the easy story, but now you know he's named after little Azure in Bolgatanga.

Al Jazeera and life on the other side of the world

It's so interesting sometimes, how different cultures are. Our driver and I were having an interesting conversation about living somewhere else. He moved to Nairobi from Mombasa. Life is difficult, but he just thinks the change in perspective is so important, and everyone should do it every now and again.
I've just returned from a whirlwind 'tour' of Kenya. 'Tour' makes it sound like pleasure, but it was really gruelling! I went from Nairobi to Mombasa to Malindi, back to Nairobi, then to Eldoret, then Kitale, Kisumu, Kiisii back to Kisumu and finally back to Nairobi again. About 8 cities in eight days! Working every day - one or two company visits per day. By the end of the eight days, I couldn't remember when I had been where!
Anyway back to the issue of 'perspective'. In Kisumu we stayed at a fairly nice hotel. I switched on the TV and searched as normal for BBC and CNN. No BBC, no CNN, only Al Jazeera!
I spent the next few days watching Al Jazeera - whenever I was not at work. Interesting programming actually. Sad to say I had always linked Al Jazeera with Jihad and terrorism, but it was a lot more than that. A news channel with more of an Middle Eastern and Asian perspective. So news about the Middle East, India, Australia, and some stories from Africa. Surprisingly I recognised quite a few BBC and CNN reporters - including a BBC weatherman I think, who had defected to Al Jazeera. Interesting few days.
Another 'happening' this week reminded that I was on the other side of the world. There was a powerful earthquake in Sumatra this week. Like any other Trinidadian, I have no idea where Sumatra even is! And I actually know a fair bit of geography. Well the following day I heard that tsunami warnings in Tanzania and Kenya (where I am) had been called off! Imagine I was thinking an earthquake in Sumatra was just interesting news, when it actually could have had an impact on life where I am now.
Talk about small world.

Knocked Up in Nairobi

So I'm back in Nairobi again! Time passes SO quickly.

My first time in Nairobi was about 4 years ago when I was leaving Tanzania. I still had the real MAD adventure spirit. People had told me all kinds of horror stories about the place. Back then, before the days of Kamau and Gianthiwa Lodge (see a veryearly post), I stayed in a hotel called Terminal Hotel. I arrived in this 'dangerous city' at about midnight, and got a taxi to take me to Terminal - a very frightening name when you don't know where you're going. Terminal wasn't so bad, though I bolted the doors and put my suitcase in front of it, and I left anyway in the morning as the sun came up.
So fast forward now to four years later (at times it also seems longer). I'm working on a REALLY interesting project - so I'm consultant now, not backpacker. The funny thing is the driver took me back to Terminal Hotel and asked if I wanted to stay there. I went in and asked - any TV, any internet? The bell hop looked at me in bewilderment. So I guess I've passed that stage.
I'm staying at a 3 star hotel - not a no-star, and when they booked it for me, I had a long long list of demands - must have in-room TV, toilet and bath, hot water, restaurant, wireless internet, pool and on and on. I've really grown up I guess.

Of course the other thing is that I'm 23 weeks pregnant, so can't rough it like I used to. I mean after the baby boy (?) is born, then I can take him on some rough rides :-) but for now, I'm taking it easy. I thought I was doing okay up to tonight. I had been eating in the hotel restaurant and another one near work most days. Nothing too adventurous. Tonight I said, time for some street food!! Anyone who knows me, knows that's my thing: the thrill of something CHEAP (yeah I'm cheap ;-), and tasty, and the risk of 'doing it like the locals. I settled on some 'Massala Chips' in a fairly decent looking place - so it wasn't real street food - but it wasn't expat food either. Massala Chips are french fries that are then stir fried in pepper, and ketchup - doesn't sound like anything special, but I've always loved them, and how can you go wrong at Ksh70 (just over US$1).
From the minute the minute the waitress brought the plate I started to feel sick. It was just too much. I finished about half my order and took the rest home - where I ate some more, started to watch a movie then fell asleep.

Well I guess Azure (baby name for now) does not like street food! because I woke up about four hours later feeling sick! I have had no nausea at all during the pregnancy, but I think the old oil, pepper and whatever else might have been running around the kitchen and used for seasoning, the whole mixture just hit me for six! So okay Azure, I give up, only restaurant food for you for the rest of the trip.
Right now I'm searching for some water to flush out my system.

Lamu Day Three

My tail and I decided to visit Matandoni, which is another town on Lamu island. I saw someone with a basket the day before and asked where it came from and my tail told me ‘Matandoni, I can take you’. I don’t know how many other towns there are in this area, so when he suggested we go there, I thought why not. I asked how far it was, and like a true village person, he said not far.
We met at eight in the morning, had breakfast and then set off.
My leg was still acting up from the walk to the beach the day before, so along the way I asked about hiring a donkey, but we couldn’t find any to take us. So we walked. I turned into Grumpy Smurf, as our ‘not far’ turned out to be quite a distance, which I should have realized it would. My map said that Matandoni was about 6 km away. 6km, I figured was a little bit more than the Queen’s Park Savannah in Port of Spain, where I occasionally exercised. It seemed easily do-able. What the guidebook neglected to say is that it was 6 km through sand and under blazing midday sun. There was no road – why did I even think there would be? So even though the walk was across fairly flat land it was torture for me. My hip felt like it had fallen out of place.
While we were walking I was so bad humoured that all the while I grumbled to myself ‘why didn’t I just go to the beach’, ‘what the hell are we supposed to see in Matandoni anyway’, I wondered if our long walk would even be worth the effort.
Eventually after about two and a half hours we arrived there. Gitau (my tail) informed someone in the village what we were there to do and they led us through some streets and put us to sit in a shed with some baskets and left us. We waited for a long time, watching some children play just outside the shed. Finally an old man came to greet us in broken English. “You are great man, you are chief of village, you are happy to meet woman” I realized he had confused you with I. He was a very pleasant man, very happy to meet us, and of course realizing that I was about to leave some money in the village even happier.
We sat and negotiated, and the old man wheeled and dealed until I left 1,000 shillings with him, in exchange for which I had some baskets and a mat. Somehow I left feeling that I had been taken advantage of. Maybe I wasn’t, but after walking two and a half hours, you assume that you’re going to get some bargains, which I didn’t. The price of the baskets and mats was only fair. I had gotten better prices in Tanzania. I was wondering how on earth I was going to be able to make this into a good business deal. Oh well.
Now how would we get out of that God forsaken place? We had walked so far and there was not even a beach at the end of all that. They had a mud beach, not even black sand, gooey mud with tiny crabs. The tide was out so far that the boats were left stuck in the mud. Our options of getting out were not easy. Could we hire a donkey I asked? No one wanted to send their donkey, because how would it get back? What about a dhow? Our helpful translator, who had appeared with the old man, said in an American accent. ‘We ken get one fiy you for about 1500 shillings (about US$20), okay?’ He had to be crazy. Now I started to get upset. I didn’t want to walk back. Fifteen hundred shillings was actually a lot of money here – three nights accommodation. Possibly the bus fare to Nairobi etc. I didn’t want to squander it on taking a dhow back to the other side of the island. Besides I felt I was being taken advantage of again. Nobody here would spend that kind of money to go anywhere. Why should I? Now of course that I put things into perspective and think that my taxi from JFK to my aunt’s apartment in Manhattan costed $50, I guess 20 doesn’t sound so bad, but it’s the principle of exploitation that upsets me, not the actual cost. Our accented guide started to realize how unhappy I was, because I kept muttering to Gitau about how bad the prices were, and we had walked so far etc. etc. so said ‘Never mind, we gonna do some good business, we gonna work something out!’ He put us to sit on a bench and went off to look for a dhow captain to ferry us back. Gitau and I sat and waited, in our boredom we took a few pictures of ourselves, of some children, and we waited. Eventually somebody came back and picked up my bag and told us to follow him. Our guy appeared just behind and said ‘I got one for 400, s’okay?’ Well I guess I could work with that. But that of course just reinforced (at least in my mind) that I was being exploited.
So we walked to the boat.
The dhow journey back, made up for all my bad humour for the entire day. It was a peaceful, quiet sailing trip, about 30 - 40 minutes to a point where the ferries leave for Lamu. The dhow is similar to the pirogue – a simple fishing boat with a large diamond shaped sail. Some dhows have engines, ours did not. We sailed through the mangroves, sometimes with too little wind, sometimes with too much and the wind would fill the sails and cause the boat to almost tip over. I can actually swim okay, my only worry was that if the boat tipped, my camera would go into the water and I would lose – yet again precious photographs. I didn’t even worry about crocodiles, but I didn’t think there were any. They left us at the ferry, after which we took a normal priced ride (50 Ksh) back to Lamu.

Lamu Day Two

I came to Lamu to be alone. I don’t know why I insist on being alone while on vacation. I’m a funny creature, when I’m alone I think I need someone to share this with, when there is someone I want my space.
One of the ills of tourism (at least in my view) is that it creates a space for the ‘beach bum’, the gigolo, the hustler, the male escort for the woman who travels alone. Of course the same exists for the men too, but I actually find the beach bum stands out more.
Today I stopped to say good morning to someone who I bought some exquisite (but inflated) coconut handicraft from, and I acquired a tail for the day. Well this morning I thought, ‘oh well, I didn’t really where I was going anyway, so what harm?’ by this evening (I write at 7:45 p.m. and I just amputated my tail) I wanted to scream!
I sat and chatted with my coconut craft colleague and some friends of his for quite some time this morning, which must have been when I could be accused of sending the wrong signals. I made the mistake of asking where I could get some yogurt to buy. A seemingly innocent question. The answer of course was more complicated than could be anticipated, this being Ramadan. You see here on Lamu no one is comfortable eating in public during Ramadan, which also means no one will sell you any food. My plan was to buy my yogurt and head for the beach where I would spend the day do some strategizing for my business and my store, until I could eat a decent meal at a nice restaurant in the evening. So when I asked where I could get some yogurt and expected to be directed to the place, I was wrong. Getting my breakfast would prove to be akin to buying drugs, a process that as an outsider could not be easily done. I needed a guide.
This guide lead me down some winding streets around and around till finally we came to a business that was closed, we had to go to the backdoor and knock very quietly till finally someone came to the second floor window. We had to shout out what we wanted and eventually some came down and brought the yogurt. I complicated the process further because my plan was to buy two yogurts, one to eat now and one for the road. When the yogurt was brought downstairs and I realized it was homemade, I sent back one, which meant that they had to make new change for me. When the change came down, I asked for a spoon, and of course the runner had to go up again. He brought down a metal spoon. Of course I’m from a plastic society, so I looked in shock at the spoon, as we were on the street. They had handed me the yogurt and locked the door. What was I to do with the spoon? I looked at my tail, Gitau, and asked ‘now what do I with this spoon?’ ‘We’ll bring it back later’ he replied. Talk about trust.
I now needed to rely on my tail to put me back onto a familiar path. He led up some streets and down some others, pointing various things along the way. ‘Drat!’ I thought, ‘now I have a guide, I’m going to have to pay this guy!’. So I asked him to lead me back to the path so I could walk on my own. ‘Hakuna matata’ he assured me. ‘By the way do you want to sit and eat?’ I didn’t mind. He went up to a compound and knocked on the door and we walked in. The compound was a traditional ‘barrack style’ yard, everyone was seated outside under a tree, while two women were preparing some food. We sat while I ate. What I thought would take 30 minutes ended up taking about four hours! I ate, they bought me a beer, I started discussing some very deep issues with a good looking and intelligent teacher of Swahili, and I think my guide was trying to get a free lunch for us. Maybe the women knew better and decided to cook even more slowly than ever, because we left at 2:30 and the food was far from ready, or maybe that was just Ramadan and the food was to eat after the fast was broken, that I doubt a little because we ate and drank while they were preparing food, everyone including the two Muslim men who stopped by dressed in skirts and kofias (skull caps), and they drank beer too! Behind closed doors anything goes.
The talk was interesting; everything was fine, until they all started to get a little drunk. I don’t drink enough to get drunk, so it’s always a problem for me to be in an environment with heavy drinkers. The scandalous woman cutting the potatoes started to talk more loudly and move her hands more freely as she spoke (with knife in one hand!). By 2:30 I really had had enough, there was no free food that would make me sit for another minute!
We got up and continued our walk to the beach – the long way. I guess that part of the day was okay, but I was HUNGRY! He was suggesting that we pass back to see how the food had progressed. I wasn’t really interested. I had planned to treat myself to dinner that night, and was starting to get upset, you mean I’ll have to treat this bum too? Anyway we walked and walked and walked. Actually to the next town and back. Really there was no other way to go as Lamu Island has no cars. On the way back we stopped at a small shop where I was finally able to get some food, not the shrimp I was dreaming of, but oh well. Not before all of my aches and pains started to appear, first my bad hip then my ankle. I had reached a point where I really could be alone. We were then met by some friend of his who had managed to inveigle 100 shillings out of me this morning. He sat at our table and started to talk about how African he was, and so pleased to meet his African sister and blah blah blah. As it got dark he managed to get another 70 shillings out of me to buy his drink. If you want to get me mad, ask me to buy a drunk alcohol! I know it seems small, especially since men buy each other drinks all the time, but I have such difficulty buying cigarettes and alcohol for people. It’s the moralist in me!
Anyway to cut a long story short, I got fed up. He walked me back to the hotel. It was already dark. I never had my shrimp. He wanted to show me where he lived, but could I leave my bag at the hotel. I said I might as well come one time. Then ok. He continued to lead me down some winding streets till we reached out by the beach. Oh I just live around the other side of the beach. Maybe it was true, but I was definitely not in the mood, and to besides it was dark, my leg was acting up, and he was a little drunk, and no I don’t want to smoke a joint or sit on the beach and watch the waves. So I politely asked him to take me back. ‘Oh no Latifah, what are you thinking? I didn’t have anything bad in mind. I just want to show you where I live.’ Yeah whatever. I wasn’t upset, just a little grumpy because I never got my shrimp (well maybe I got another kind because he was very short!) and never got any time alone. Oh well….

To Lamu

I have always been one to pick the most remote spot on the map of any country and decide I want to go there! In Brazil I wanted to go to Oiapoque (though never made it), in Trinidad I chose to go to Toco, Cedros and Moruga, in Uganda I went to Kissoro, in Kenya I chose to go to Lamu.
Lamu is Kenya’s oldest inhabited tows, and is supposed to have changed little over the centuries. Access is exclusively by boat from the mainland, though there is an airstrip on a neighbouring island. There is reportedly one car on the island belonging to the District Commissioner. The streets are narrow and winding. People walk or use donkeys. Sounds like my kind of challenge.
I first heard of Lamu three years ago while in Tanzania, during its annual Swahili festival. I find Swahili culture fascinating and saw a very good documentary on the festival on Tanzanian TV. Last year while in Kenya again I had considered going to Lamu but chose to go to Ghana instead (and yes, I went to the most remote spot there too). This year I passed through Kenya to go to a conference in Zambia and decided it was now or never.
I had to weigh several options. Kenya must be the most exciting place to visit in Africa; there is so much to do. Masai Mara park? Karen Blixen museum? Mount Meru hike? A trip across the border to Ngorongoro or Serengeti? Cultural villages? The beaches around Mombasa? I said no to all, and chose to go to the remote village of Lamu.
So now I write from this remote island near to Somalia. I survived the trip!
My safari began almost by chance. Though I had the idea of coming here all along, I really had some business to do in Nairobi, and wasn’t sure how long that would take, so my plans had to be very flexible. My supplier, Richard, and I had a very good meeting on Wednesday and he asked what I was doing on Thursday, if I wanted to go to the town where the work was done, Kisii. Of course! Those of you who know me, know that I need no second offer. So we made plans to meet the following day. I informed my hostess that I’d be traveling and packed my bags. My plan was to go to Kisii, then on my return visit Mombasa, another Kenyan city that I’d never visited before, then come back to Nairobi to collect my things.
In the middle of the night I get a text message from Richard. ‘Can’t take you to Kisii tomorrow, maybe you should go directly to Mombasa and then we’ll go when you come back.’ So in the morning I was on the bus to Mombasa, all the while wondering ‘what am I going to do in Mombasa?’
The ride was LONG. About 8 – 9 hours. The landscape was beautiful as it always is in this region, if not a little monotonous. The dryness, thorn bushes and baobab trees can only keep us interested for so long! However there were some colubus monkeys along the roadway just before the city of Voi to provide some interest.
The heavens opened about an hour before we arrived in Mombasa. I steupsed as I remembered looking twice at the umbrella then actually taking it out of my bag! So I arrived in Mombasa, which on an ordinary day is probably a pleasant city, to pouring rain, and in some places knee high flood waters. I was not pleased. To make matters worse I ended up with a phenomenal taxi bill (almost the cost of my bus ticket!) because the taxi had to take me to the bus station, and then two hotels. The first because I decided I did not want to stay in Mombasa and was trying to get on the next bus, and two hotels because the first was full.
I ended up staying at Berachah, a clean but simple place with a restaurant inside. Very important on a rainy night.
The following morning my expensive taxi came back for me and drove me about two blocks to the bus stand! At night I couldn’t work out the distance! I was lucky enough to get the last ticket. We boarded on time, but somehow no one could get the bus started! We left an hour late.
Being Ramadhan and given that we are along the East African coast, Islam is everywhere. So when I was just about to turn on my IPod, the loud speakers began to blare what could only have been the sermon for the day in Swahili and Arabic. This continued for about 3 hours! Then they switched from the evangelizing gentleman to a woman, giving her sermon, also in Swahili, among the few words I picked out were something about ‘sketi transparenti’ (transparent skirts), I’m glad I couldn’t understand it because I suddenly became conscious of the fact I was one of only two women in the bus with an uncovered head, and I was the only one in short sleeves.
Ramadhan probably was not such a good time to go to Lamu!
My expensive driver promised me the trip was five hours. I don’t know if his Swahili time is different to everyone else’s but it took eight hours. An interesting trip through a vast and empty landscape. The highlights of this trip were seeing hippos bathing in a pond, baboons running across the roadway, prehistoric palm trees that looked like they came out of The Flintstones, exotic ladies selling milk at Garsen junction wearing only khangas and beads and silver jewellery and finally realizing that the two army men we picked weren’t just hitching a ride, they actually were our armed escort to protect us from Somali bandits!
When the bus finally stopped I looked around and was disappointed, where were the beautiful coconut trees like what one saw along the coast in Tanzania (or in Cedros!)? We were surrounded by mangroves it looked like we were going to Caroni. The ferry to take us to the island also reminded me of Caroni, and my trips to the Amazon and the Pantanal in Brazil. Anyway as we drew nearer to land, things seemed to look up, and now as I write this almost four hours after landing, I think I’ll stay an extra night!
What has convinced me? It’s a simple place with nice people (though the ubiquitous beach bums can be annoying), good food, reasonable prices, wonderful architecture and there seems to be a beach with coconut trees nearby – hope the weather changes. I may spend my time writing, taking photographs (I lost my photographs of Zanzibar) or on the beach. Then I’ll go back to Nairobi collect my things, ship them off and go back home.
Would I come back to Lamu? Who knows, it’s a long grueling journey – even for a knockabout traveler like me, but of course I like the challenge and maybe next time I might want to go even further.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles 1 & 2

Planes, Trains and Automobiles 1
I’m on the bus to Mombasa, and surprise surprise, we are back to normalcy, a world where fares are marked and you pay what you see. No negotiation required. On the bus to Kabale, every passenger paid a different price. Your price depended on your begotiation skills. My skills were fair so I paid 18,000 Uganda shillings. The woman next to me was more efficient so she paid 15 thousand. In Mbarara, two hours from our destination, they unceremoniously put us all out and into a matatu. I was upset and launched my angry tirade against the conductor.
‘Kondukta’, I complained in my best East African accent, ‘you people are dishonest! You overcharge me to my destination, now instead of taking me there, you put me into a taxi and leave me!’
‘Madam’ the conductor said, ‘we will pay for the taxi, but you were lucky! Look!’ he showed me the other tickets, ‘You were not overcharged! Look! All these people paid more than you!’

Planes, Trains and Automobiles 2
Another surprise in Nairobi, buses with seatbelts, air-conditioning and a seating plan!

Planes are old news for me. I don’t care about what’s outside the window. Except for my flights over the Sahara – by day and by night, the landscape is normally not that exciting. On buses though I give up the aisle and scramble to the window to look at the changing landscape.
My window seats have afforded me views of
Giraffes in Arusha, monkeys and baboons in Uganda and Kenya, gazelles in Swaziland, endless bucks while driving through a national park in Uganda, as well as the changing landscape breathtakingly spectacular mountain views along the way to Kissoro and Kabale near Rwanda, prehistoric trees along the coast in Kenya, evidence of the Rift Valley in Tanzania, Kenya and even Uganda, and finally the varied cultures expressed through changes in architecture and even clothing on the line outside.
For me it’s not the destination, but the journey that is exciting.

Squatting in the dark waiting for the critters to bite

Hello,
Well I'm back in civilization if we can call Kampala civilised ;-) I was visiting a friend in a village. Last night she asked if anyone in Trinidad would know what an outhouse was! And I really wondered.My memory of using a pit latrine in Point is very vague! I seem to remember walking past the pigs to do so? Daddy could correct me on that. I wonder if Andre knew that life at all? Last night in the village we had no water and no lights,and my friend Phoebes has a coalpot. At about 8 in the evening I decided I wanted to have a bath and use the toilet! What drama! She had no torch and I had to find my way to the latrine with a candle! Which meant walking very slowly so as not to blow it out,and praying that no animal is going to runover my foot (or worse bite my exposed behind!) while I'm squatting.Of course the bath meant heating the precious water and giving me a little in a bucket so I could sponge off. Luckily Kabale is very cold so you can survive with a bath evrey two or three days ;-)
I survived, but decided last night I could definitely not live out here.
Phoebes fortunately should be able tomove to a new housewith kitchen and toilet inside by next year.

Ode to Mozambique

Few people really know about what drew me to Africa, but tonight a 10 minute interaction with someone I had never met before reminded me.

I was in Zambia at a review conference hosted by the Commonwealth Secretariat to analyse two projects that had been recently undertaken. I had led one of these projects in Uganda for six months in 2005.

Our conference had ended and on the last evening we had dinner at a very sophisticated restaurant in Lusaka. I was seated next the one guy at the conference who I had thought remotely interesting, and was chatting with the coordinator, the guy and two women who worked at the CYN offices in Lusaka. My ‘Nice Guy’ mentioned that a friend of his had been waiting for dinner to finish so that they could go out afterwards. His friend was from Mozambique, but didn’t know anyone in Lusaka so he was seated alone in a corner. I, of course had spent 6 weeks in Mozambique in 2005 and had suggested that we invite the friend to join us as our dinner had been going on for hours – what would expect if you bring together 26 people – and the poor guy had been sitting alone all night, but Mr. Nice Guy didn’t have the courage to ask his boss if his friend could ‘storm’ the dinner, and I didn’t know the boss well enough to make the suggestion.

At some point in the evening, the friend had decided he had had enough and walked up to the table to chat with Nice Guy, who introduced him to me. He was Elder. I said “Tudo Bem” to Elder in Portuguese and he looked so relieved to find someone who he could speak with that his face lighted up and broke into a smile, and he confidently sat with his drink in hand and we started to chat about the usual – where was I from, where did I learn Portuguese etc. etc. What happened next though is that Elder simply took over the show for the next few minutes. He politely switched back to English explaining that he could not be so rude in the company of so many people to speak in Portuguese. He was just as fluent in English as he was in Portuguese. Elder moved the conversation from banalities about the Portuguese language to a level of depth that I had forgotten about. He discussed history, politics, current affairs, economics … explained why Mozambique was in the Commonwealth, explained what he felt the West was trying to get out of its new interaction with Mozambique … he went on and on. I was mesmerized.

When he stopped for air I introduced him to Judy, our Liaison Officer at the Commonwealth Secretariat. At our conference we had been discussing Mozambique and the problems with working there etc. Judy was happy to meet him and I watched in fascination the confidence with which Elder interacted with Judy. He wasn’t intimidated by the White woman from England. He was discussing the same issues with her – the difficulty of being outspoken in Africa, the impact of the West on Africa etc. I could only listen.

Then I remembered that was it. That was the reason. The sophistication, the confidence, the charm, the worldliness of The Mozambican, particularly The Mozambican Man. I had become fascinated with Africa because of Mozambique in the first place. Mozambique – a forgotten corner of Africa, one of the least African of the Africa was actually responsible for my being here.

I was taken back to a time when I used to have similar political discussions as a student in Brazil with my colleagues from Mozambique. Ilidio, Sergio, Dunga, Oscar, Paulo de Farmacia and later on, Roberto, Engels, Paulo Matabele, Miguel, e aquele amigo do Paulo M. Wonderful, confident, strong, beautiful men. Maybe I never discussed anything with them, maybe I just listened.

I have never been that deep or that political, but I have always been fascinated by people who were. I hadn’t found that level of intellectual depth in the general public before I met my friends in Mozambique, and probably haven’t found it since, and most certainly not anywhere else in Africa as yet. It was my love or appreciation for my friends in Mozambique that had pushed me to go to Africa the first time, and though I’ve been to nine African countries so far, my social and intellectual experience in Maputo certainly stands way out ahead of the other places.

In 2004, I finally got to Mozambique, 10 years after the love affair had started. You, the reader would never believe of course that apart from a casual fling with Paulo M, and with such deep relationships with 10 wonderful men, I never had a Mozambican boyfriend! And even when I reached ‘The promised Land’ I ended up in a complicated relationship with a West African man. Oh well I guess I missed that chance. Who knows, maybe I’ll end up in Moz again in another 10 years.

Sinto falta da malta. Mozambique e maning nice!

For the record, in case you're wondering which 10 countries I've been to, so far: Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Mozambique, South Africa, Swaziland, Ethiopia, Ghana and Zambia