Arrival in Mozambique

After a series of memorable events--packing 25 adults, 14 children, a couple of chickens, and all of our luggage into the back of a small pickup truck, a vomiting mother, bag swiping boys on bicycles, and a misunderstanding about payments resulting in a kid putting a hex on me--we arrived in Cuamba, Mozambique. Not too much changed once we crossed the border, mud hut, thatched roof villages sprang up occasionally along the road, skinny, scabbed, knobby kneed children covered in dust run to out chase the lone passing vehicle, young women wander down the road with an infant wrapped in colorful fabric on her back, a toddler clenching her finger, and a few older children surrounding her. I can't help but think how desperately these women need access to birth control. I'd guess that 90% of women here, and throughout sub-Saharan Africa are burdened with far too many children. It's no wonder that with an average of 6 children, families cannot pull themselves out of poverty. Rising food and transport prices, poor access to education or health services, and an income completely relying upon ever changing weather patterns, its a hard life, but all it takes to change is empowering women, one village at a time.
Jeffery Sachs is heading the Millennium Development Project whereby he and his team work closely with individual villages in Africa and Asia to help them meet the Millennium Development Goals--access to quality health care, free education for all children, improved, sustainable farming techniques, and women as income generators and small business owners. The success of these villages is astounding, it's heart warming and inspiring to finally hear of an African development project with significant, lasting results. Meaningful success are far too hard to come by out here, especially with the billions of dollars being poured into the continent. But I think Mr. Sachs has taken the right approach. It may be an approach that is much more time consuming and labor intensive, bit it works and that's a lot more than most big NGO's can boast for out here.
Anyways, back to our journey. So the people and landscape changed little when we crossed the border, but what did change was the language. Mozambique is a former Portuguese colony, so unexpectedly Kate and I have found ourselves digging deep to uncover those few words of Spanish that we know. At least we can ask the price of things, and for the most part, understand the numerical responses. But, everyone does call me by name here. Dona in Portuguese means woman or lady, which is a little strange, but humorously amusing.
We arrived in Cuamba on Tuesday evening to the warm glows of a setting sun, wrapping the entire town in a blanket of golden shadows, smoothing the edges of an otherwise dusty small town. The train to Nampula originates in Cuamba and seeing that Kate and I have had more than enough hard, long bus rides in the past few weeks, the prospect of a 12 hour train ride was incentive enough to make it here by Tuesday night, just in time to catch the early morning train on Wednesday. Through limited Spanish, hand gestures, and afew drawings on napkins and in the dirt, we managed to find a hotel, buy tickets for the train, baguettes and snacks for the next day's ride, and even dinner at a local watering hole. The menu was impossibly difficult to decipher, but my first bit into an egg and cheese sandwich had me holding back tears of joy. It tasted just like a McDonald's Egg McMuffin, and its only downfall was that I had finished the thing in 4 bites and it left me craving more. It's funny how much of the past 10 months' memories are centered around food, and this little town will definitely be remembered for it's sande de ovo y queilo.
We woke up at 4am Wednesday morning to board the departing train and wound up in a compartment with 2 English boys, Stewart and Josh. The pair has been traversing the classic London to Cape Town route for the past 7 months, and despite their lack of cleanliness, provided good company for the journey. And best of all, we were able to swap books, so FINALLY we have some decent books to read!
The train stopped frequently in small villages along the way, and I got to indulge in one of my favorite Indian past-times--sampling all of the unknown foods being sold by local villagers. Fried dough, honey peanut brittle, and perfectly tart mandarins were the day's highlihgts. Topped by a bottle of Manica, one of Mozambique's favorite brews, at 10:30 in the morning, and I couldn't have asked for a more pleasurable ride.
We arrived in Nampula, once again to the beauty of a setting sun and what seemed to be the entire town anxiously waiting to greet the arriving train, found a hotel that despite it's high price tag, afforded us the luxury of a hot shower, flush toilet, and CNN. And much to my surprise, this morning, a free breakfast buffet...with I might add, Cornflakes! Oh what a bowl of cereal will do for one's spirit!