Pemba.
What a week! What an experience! We have travelled through a country so unlike anything I've seen. Driving on roads that aren't roads, sometimes merely tracks in the terrain. Drivning through loose sand, water wholes, ditches, shrubs, climbing hills I thought impossible for a vehicle to manage, over bridges consisting of tree trunks put together, bumping on the car seats for hours and hours. Driving for miles through a scorched landscape that looks barren and on the same time inhabited by village after village. An ancient tradition to burn the ground. People keep doing it despite campaigns against uncontrolled fires. Nobody seems to be able to give a good explanation to why it is done, perhaps to scare off wild animals some say.
Anyway, in most of Niassa province we were the news of the day passing the villages, everybody waved at us, many people came out of their huts to see the vehicle passing. We almost got tired from waving our wrists all the time, for the villages are abundant along the roads. About 10 000 people live in the province and perhaps most of them along the roads.
Coming into Marrupa was a strange experience: the road from Lichinga to Marrupa is actually very good, paved and even, so it was a quick drive, but we started late from Lichinga and it became dark before we entered the town of Marrupa which does not have electricity. We entered a town with broad streets, houses and people walking around - in complete darknes. Asking for the administrator's house, we soon had a guide with us in the car to show us the way and the administrator received us in his candle lit "alpendre", an out door wooden sort of veranda, with roof but open walls, often round shape like a Swedish lusthus without windows. we asked for a place to sleep, and he offered us the guest house of the administration. We had a room each, our own "empregado" or care taker, who boiled water for our tea and morning "shower" and slept on the porch every night. He guarded the house seven days and nights per week. His family lived near by and he cluld go home and eat now and then or his wife came with food. We styed in this house at three different occations during last week, coming back to Marrupa a couple of times.
Other places we have stayed: 1) a hunting camp in the Niassa reserve where we heard a leopard sneeking around in the bush at night, waitning to catch a bush buck, next night we heard a mouse eating half a plastic shoping bag on our floor, although we didn't know it was a mouse, it might have been a cobra so we stayed in bed until dawn. I suppose the mouse had decongestion problems next day...
In the reserve we saw baboons, reed buck, harter beast (?) and buffalo + some guinea fowl and another type of buck I don't remember the name of, but not a single one of the 15 000 elephants that habitate the reserve! But we saw fresh droppings, trampled grass and torn tree trees so they had been there recently.
2) the parish in Maua as paying guests of the catholic priests and brothers.
3) A guest house (or lodge) in Cabo Delgado run by a French NGO- organisation working for local develpoment of traditional crafts, farming and cooking. Here I was guided in their botanical garden by the local healer (medicin man) who showed me a variety of local trees and plants with different medical effects. I also participated in cooking a curried chicken casserole with coco nut, for lunch, which tasted divine ( no thanks to me).
We have visited schools without tables or chairs and two rooms shared by 200 children and three teachers, we have visited a hospital with beds and plenty of medicine, but no running water, no screens in some windows, beds from the 1930:s a need for another doctor ( they had one), but no house for the doctor to live in. There is everywhere money lacking to raise the standard. There is money lacking to buy diesel to fuel the newly purchased generators in towns like Marrupa, Maua and Mecula so there is no electricity. But everywhere we have been, people are smiling and welcoming. We have been very well received and taken care of.
Our diet has consisted to a great deal of bred, fried eggs, tuna or sardines and nuts, occasionally fresh tomatoes, onion, banana and papaya. Strangely enough you can (nearly) always find a coke, often even cold thanks to local generators in the shops.
Today in Pemba, we had our first sallad for quite some time. The weather has been warm and dry until reaching Pemba, where it is terribly warm and humid. But there is the sea! And tomorrow we will go to the beach.
thank you for comments! Of course you can write in Swedish!
I will try to load my pictures to a cd and also to put some of them on the blog while in Pemba. We are staying here until Tuesday morning as it looks. take care everybody!