Tag Archives: Mozambique

Photographs and memories

Adventures, Ideas, Mozambique, Seoul, ,

There is something about photographs. Since I returned, I have thought very little about the experiences in Korea. As in any journey from one culture to another, there has been a sweet honeymoon period and I have given myself over to that heightened appreciation for the beauty and amazingness of the Eastern Cape. Today I plugged in my camera for the first time and discovered I hadn’t even downloaded my pictures from Hongdae and the DMZ.

I duly downloaded them. Looking through the pictures was the strangest (strongest?) experience. I had downloaded a picture in the wrong place. I’d put it in the Hongdae folder but it wasn’t – it was a picture taken in Itaewon. I took it from the window of the restaurant where I had lunch after I went to the DMZ. The window was open and the flags strung across the street were flapping in the breeze. It was a quiet afternoon. It was a Tuesday and not many people were wandering around this tourist/shopping/restaurant area. I suppose it would still be busy by many people’s standards, but it was quiet for Seoul. I find myself, in my mind, pronouncing Seoul in the Korean manner. The photo takes me back. I can taste the Korean beer – not very good, especially after the North Korean beer we’d tried earlier in the day. I had fish and chips. It was the first Western-style fish-and-chips meal I’d had in Korea. The restaurant was called Little Guinness, I remember now. I can feel the breeze through the window and hear the sounds. I sat on the side with the hatch from the kitchen. In the background, beneath the music, I can hear people speaking Korean as they prepare the food. It took a while to arrive – I was hungry – but the day was beautifully hot and clear and it was peaceful there.

There are other pictures, later. I went to a park by a river. By THE river, the Han River (Hangang). There was a man by a tree, in a field of flowers, practicing the saxophone. I’d forgotten about it. I watched him for a while. It was so unusual.

And the craziness of cosmopolitan Hongdae. The Self-Esteem boutique. SPAM restaurant. B-hind coffee shop. The crisp taste of the white wine at the bar where I sat on that last night. A beautiful Italian place. There were dogs in the courtyard outside the window next to my table. Children came and talked to them and fed them. Groups settled down to eat pizza and drink wine. Families sat on the balcony across the courtyard (all the same restaurant) and ate fancy dinners. I can taste the wine as the last sunlight fades and the night settles softly on the city.

I am struck by the tangible sensations evoked by the photographs – the smells, the tastes, the feeling of the wind. I go further back, to the pictures from the Mozambique trip, a good year and a half ago now. They’re just as vivid. The rain on the first morning in Maputo and later, when we stopped and ordered Sangria, and in the wild gardens. How soaked we were when we finally got back and my hat that would never be the same. And Rich and Jonathan going off to find prawns for dinner. Breakfast at that surf-themed place with the bookshop in Tofo after waking up because it was no longer possible to sleep in the heat of the yellow tent. Looking the pictures, I feel the heat, even on this cold winter morning. I had fish and chips in Tofo. The others had gone off exploring but I stayed behind. It was the best fish and chips I’ve ever eaten. I don’t have a picture of that. I wonder why.

There is a picture of Inhambane that New Years Day. The sun is just going down and people are starting to gather on the wall by the water, across the road from where we were staying. My picture is blurred and not very good but still I can hear the music starting and taste the cold Mozambiquan beer as we sat down to watch the people and soak up the atmosphere. It was such a perfect evening.

Days later, in the lush green of Vilankulos, the squid pasta evening. We drank Savannahs there. I’d forgotten that. And that amazing sunset. And the dog. And the rolls. Suddenly I remember those tiny, sweet rolls we bought that morning in Inhambane and ate with those Senor something-or-other chips. That was the day we took the ferry and found that bakery/ice-cream shop. The memories tumble over each other like a dam bursting. The tastes and sounds, the heat and the rain. Being soaking wet on the ferry. Everything comes back in a rush. I feel the need to go even further back, to a long-ago cruise in the Caribbean. The pictures are almost like travelling – they allow you to go back, in your mind, to revisit and experience again. I am primed for travel.

Next to my computer sits a bus ticket. It’s not a long trip, just an overnighter, in fact, but it a little taste, a little glimpse of travel. A little picture, even. I pack my camera back in its little bag, check that I have extra batteries and put it in my daypack. I have a longer journey planned for next week, to one of my favourite cities in the world, but for now this will do nicely – a little journey to a little place that more than any other makes me feel home.

One hundred stories

Daegu, Mozambique, Why, ,

It seems somehow appropriate that I should write the 100th post on this blog just as I start packing up and getting my life in order to leave the land of the morning calm vegetable sellers. Having recently said I’d be leaving in 40 days, I have now been told I will be leaving sooner than I thought. It seems my school has decided that the kids need a Korean-speaking teacher, so I finish work in two weeks (end of May).

In honour of this 100th post, I have spent the last few hours rereading my life. This blog began, in November of 2008, as a way of recording the adventure on which I was about (or thought I was about to) to embark. I was going to Russia. After a rather traumatic period of joblessness and several months of interim positions, I had taken a basic TEFL course, applied for a position and, after a phone interview and a series of emails back and forth, been offered a position to teach English to adults in Moscow. How different my life would have been, had that plan panned out. Obviously, it didn’t. At the end of 2008, the global financial crisis struck, almost collapsing the Russian economy and putting a very definite pause to their English-language-teaching industry. My dreams of Russia had to be shelved.

I was fairly shattered when I found out. It was the end of a long year. I had quit my job and put everything into this plan. Round about the same time, some friends were planning a two-week trip to the coastal paradise country of Mozambique. I had been a little jealous of their planning but had put it out of my mind because, after all, a short trip to Mozambique didn’t really compete with Russia. Now Russia was no longer and option and when one of my very supportive friends, one of those doing the Moz trip, suggested I join them, I was able to brush aside all rational ‘reasons’ why I shouldn’t and get (a little bit overwroughtly) excited.

That is how I ended up in Maputo and Inhambane and Vilankulos with a congenial, stimulating group of friends on a trip that changed my life just a little. Strangely, I didn’t ever write much about the trip, but I go back to it in my mind again and again and regularly look again at all the photos I took. I remember so many moments. There was the day we walked what felt like the whole of Maputo, in warm rain and sunshine. We saw the Iron House and the pretty cathedral. We visited a wild garden, more beautiful for the neglect and slow decay. We discovered a sausage tree outside an old fort. We failed to find a war museum which was either closed or no longer there. It was listed in Richard’s guide-book. The book that we paged through so many times that it was, by the end, almost falling apart.

We spent New Year’s in Tofo, which was perhaps not our most inspired decision. The subsequent stint in Inhambane, however, was incredibly special. On New Year’s night, we found ourselves sitting on the low wall between the street in front of our backpackers and the water of the bay, as a street party happened around us. Just near where we were sitting, an entire Indian family, parents and children, grandparents and teenagers, was gathered in beautiful colourful clothes. A DJ played and people danced in the streets. Women in little more than bikinis lounged on the top of vehicles. Richard entranced the local children with his fiery poi. It was warm and festive, yet somehow peaceful – with no-one making demands on us and no need to rush. Everyone was having a good time and we were welcome to sit and sip our beers and simply watch.

A few days later, post 5-hour drive in an overcrowded taxi with water leaking through the back door, we spend some of the happiest days I have known in beautiful Vilankulos. The sea was perfect blue, the sun shared the skies with dramatic clouds and put on spectacular sunsets, there were palm trees everywhere and islands danced across the water. We walked for ages, along dusty streets, along the shore, between rustic palm-leaf homes, past half-finished island resorts. We sipped ice-cold soft-drinks in the only place with internet – a run-down coastal hotel on the other end of town. We stopped at a bakery and managed in our limited lingo, to buy some rolls. We bought squid from a man on the side of the road, who sold it to us in a plastic bag, and took it back to our backpackers, where we put the slightly dodgy kitchen to good use (or at least those of us who are good in a kitchen did) and produced a memorable lulas pasta. We made pina coladas from the basic fresh ingredients. We adopted a dog, or rather, a dog adopted Richard and followed us home.

And all the while, rambling, open-ended conversations drifted back and forth. Conversations about life and choices and travel. Perhaps the most important moment of that trip for me was rather innocuous. One of the nights in Tofo, we found ourselves on the beach below the backpackers, long after dark. We weren’t doing anything in particular, just chatting and relaxing and playing with the poi-thingy. There was a conversation. I don’t remember talking much about my situation (i.e. Russia falling through) but I’m sure I must have – it was definitely uppermost in my mind. On this occasion, I was chatting with one of my fellow travellers who had had his own experience of teaching overseas. I was sad that I couldn’t go to the unusual and dream-fulfilling destination I’d picked. He said I should just take the chance to go where I could go – just get on with it.

A few months later, after a few more months of limbo and the torture of waiting for bureaucracy, I was getting ready to go to Asia. It wasn’t all plain sailing this time either. The evening before I headed up to Joburg, where I’d be for a week to sort out the final visa details before taking off for Korea, I was informed by my recruiter that the school had changed their minds and no longer wanted to hire me. I suppose I should by this stage have been getting used to disappointments but it takes a lot to psych myself up for major life changes and I still don’t react well to them falling through at the last minute. To say I was bitter would be an understatement, but is probably the best way to sum it up. I still went up to Joburg – a good friend was leaving on her own adventure so I needed to see her – before returning home one last time. Luckily Daegu had a second chance and by the end of June I was getting on a plane – tense with anxiety and anticipation – and flying off to Asia.

Daegu has been good to me in many ways. I’ve had a chance to regain a my confidence, to spend time with myself, to make new friends and to experience so many new things. I have visited centuries old palaces in the heart of one of the biggest cities in the world. I’ve seen a giant fish market and walked along a foreign beach. I have visited parks and mountains and walked for hours, with others and alone. I have spent an awesome day riding bikes through a beautiful autumn with a delightful group of friends. I’ve been run off a mountain and soared through the air (paragliding). I have visited ancient tomb parks and wonderful museums. I have fallen in love with Gyeongju and it’s legacy of 1000 years of Shilla rule. I have drunk cocktails from plastic bags and tried dongdongju and soju. I have been to three operas and a ballet. I have spent a weekend in a beautiful hotel and taken a ferry trip on a lake. I’ve experienced a far-away Christmas and visited temples and monuments to a history so different from my own. I have learned about a culture from teenagers and children. I’ve tried beondaegi and bossam and learned to like kimchi. I’ve tried skiing and snowboarding and seen real snow. I have written so many stories.

In just a few weeks, I will leave Korea, get on a plane and fly home. In that time, there will be a few more experiences but most of my Korean narratives are done. That is a strange sensation. I’m thrilled to be returning to the land of cheese and lamb and people who sing and, most of all, those I love and miss dearly. But it’s strange to think that the Korean stories are almost done.

I’ve  not been entirely sure what will happen to this blog, but reading through again today has reminded me that it isn’t just a ‘Claire-in-Korea’ tale. There are stories here of other places and other things. So perhaps I will simply take it with me, change the name and keep writing. I have no doubt my life will continue to be filled with exploration and experiences. I look forward to writing them here or elsewhere: more disjointed highlights and piece-meal narratives of what I can only hope will be a more-than-ordinary life. A toast to 100 posts and 100 more stories to tell.

One hundred stories

It seems somehow appropriate that I should write the 100th post on this blog just as I start packing up and getting my life in order to leave the land of the morning calm vegetable sellers. Having recently said I’d be leaving in 40 days, I have now been told I will be leaving sooner than I thought. It seems my school has decided that the kids need a Korean-speaking teacher, so I finish work in two weeks (end of May).

In honour of this 100th post, I have spent the last few hours rereading my life. This blog began, in November of 2008, as a way of recording the adventure on which I was about (or thought I was about to) to embark. I was going to Russia. After a rather traumatic period of joblessness and several months of interim positions, I had taken a basic TEFL course, applied for a position and, after a phone interview and a series of emails back and forth, been offered a position to teach English to adults in Moscow. How different my life would have been, had that plan panned out. Obviously, it didn’t. At the end of 2008, the global financial crisis struck, almost collapsing the Russian economy and putting a very definite pause to their English-language-teaching industry. My dreams of Russia had to be shelved.

I was fairly shattered when I found out. It was the end of a long year. I had quit my job and put everything into this plan. Round about the same time, some friends were planning a two-week trip to the coastal paradise country of Mozambique. I had been a little jealous of their planning but had put it out of my mind because, after all, a short trip to Mozambique didn’t really compete with Russia. Now Russia was no longer and option and when one of my very supportive friends, one of those doing the Moz trip, suggested I join them, I was able to brush aside all rational ‘reasons’ why I shouldn’t and get (a little bit overwroughtly) excited.

That is how I ended up in Maputo and Inhambane and Vilankulos with a congenial, stimulating group of friends on a trip that changed my life just a little. Strangely, I didn’t ever write much about the trip, but I go back to it in my mind again and again and regularly look again at all the photos I took. I remember so many moments. There was the day we walked what felt like the whole of Maputo, in warm rain and sunshine. We saw the Iron House and the pretty cathedral. We visited a wild garden, more beautiful for the neglect and slow decay. We discovered a sausage tree outside an old fort. We failed to find a war museum which was either closed or no longer there. It was listed in Richard’s guide-book. The book that we paged through so many times that it was, by the end, almost falling apart.

We spent New Year’s in Tofo, which was perhaps not our most inspired decision. The subsequent stint in Inhambane, however, was incredibly special. On New Year’s night, we found ourselves sitting on the low wall between the street in front of our backpackers and the water of the bay, as a street party happened around us. Just near where we were sitting, an entire Indian family, parents and children, grandparents and teenagers, was gathered in beautiful colourful clothes. A DJ played and people danced in the streets. Women in little more than bikinis lounged on the top of vehicles. Richard entranced the local children with his fiery poi. It was warm and festive, yet somehow peaceful – with no-one making demands on us and no need to rush. Everyone was having a good time and we were welcome to sit and sip our beers and simply watch.

A few days later, post 5-hour drive in an overcrowded taxi with water leaking through the back door, we spend some of the happiest days I have known in beautiful Vilankulos. The sea was perfect blue, the sun shared the skies with dramatic clouds and put on spectacular sunsets, there were palm trees everywhere and islands danced across the water. We walked for ages, along dusty streets, along the shore, between rustic palm-leaf homes, past half-finished island resorts. We sipped ice-cold soft-drinks in the only place with internet – a run-down coastal hotel on the other end of town. We stopped at a bakery and managed in our limited lingo, to buy some rolls. We bought squid from a man on the side of the road, who sold it to us in a plastic bag, and took it back to our backpackers, where we put the slightly dodgy kitchen to good use (or at least those of us who are good in a kitchen did) and produced a memorable lulas pasta. We made pina coladas from the basic fresh ingredients. We adopted a dog. Or rather, a dog adopted Richard and followed us home.

And all the while, rambling, open-ended conversations drifted back and forth. Conversations about life and choices and travel. Perhaps the most important moment of that trip for me was rather innocuous. One of the nights in Tofo, we found ourselves on the beach below the backpackers, long after dark. We weren’t doing anything in particular, just chatting and relaxing and playing with the poi-thingy. There was a conversation. I don’t remember talking much about my situation (i.e. Russia falling through) but I’m sure I must have – it was definitely uppermost in my mind. On this occasion, I was chatting with one of my fellow travellers who had had his own experience of teaching overseas. I was sad that I couldn’t go to the unusual and dream-fulfilling destination I’d picked. He said I should just take the chance to go where I could go – just get on with it.

And that is how, after a few more months of limbo and the torture of waiting for bureaucracy, I found myself getting ready to go to Asia. It wasn’t all plain sailing this time either. The evening before I headed up to Joburg, where I’d be for a week to sort out the final visa details before taking off for Korea, I was informed by my recruiter that the school had changed their minds and no longer wanted to hire me. I suppose I should by this stage have been getting used to disappointments but it takes a lot to psych myself up for major life changes and I still don’t react well to them falling through at the last minute. To say I was bitter would be an understatement, but is probably the best way to sum it up. I still went up to Joburg – a good friend was leaving on her own adventure so I needed to see her – before returning home one last time. Luckily Daegu had a second chance and by the end of June I was getting on a plane – tense with anxiety and anticipation – and flying off to Asia.

Daegu has been good to me in many ways. I’ve had a chance to regain a my confidence, to spend time with myself, to make new friends and to experience so many new things. I have visited centuries old palaces in the heart of one of the biggest cities in the world. I’ve seen a giant fish market and walked along a foreign beach. I have visited parks and mountains and walked for hours, with others and alone. I have spent an awesome day riding bikes through a beautiful autumn with a delightful group of friends. I’ve been run off a mountain and soared through the air, paragliding. I have visited ancient tomb parks and wonderful museums. I have fallen in love with Gyeongju and it’s legacy of a thousand years of Shilla rule. I’ve drunk cocktails from plastic bags and tried dongdongju and soju. I have been to three operas and a ballet. I have spent a weekend in a beautiful hotel and taken a ferry trip on a lake. I’ve experienced a far-away Christmas and visited temples and monuments to a history so different from my own. I’ve learned about a culture from the mouths of children and teenagers. I’ve tried beondaegi and bossam and learned to like kimchi. I’ve tried skiing and snowboarding and seen real snow. I have written so many stories.

In just a few weeks, I will leave Korea, get on a plane and fly home. In that time, there will be a few more experiences but most of my Korean narratives are done. That is a strange sensation. I’m thrilled to be returning to the land of cheese and lamb and people who sing and, most of all, those I love and miss dearly. But it’s strange to think that the Korean stories are almost done. A few more adventures to write up and then I will be gone.

I’ve not been entirely sure what will happen to this blog, but reading through everything today has reminded me that it isn’t just a ‘Claire-in-Korea’ tale. There are stories here of other places and other things. So perhaps I will simply take it with me. Change the name and keep writing. I have no doubt my life will continue to be filled with exploration and experiences. I look forward to writing them here or elsewhere: more disjointed highlights and narratives of what I can only hope will be a more-than-ordinary life. So, a toast to 100 posts and 100 more stories to tell.

And men with guns

Mozambique

It’s always dangerous to pass judgement on a country you don’t know, somewhere you have visited for a very short time, as a tourist, not really being part of it. There is a good chance you’re wrong, that your exceptionally limited experience doesn’t give you the full picture. But there are some things you notice, there are things you see.

One of the things I notices, from the first day in Maputo, was the men with guns. On every corner, it seemed, down every street, were armed guards. Police patrolling in pairs, each with AK47s, swinging them back and forth, tossing them around nonchalantly. Army men riding around on the backs of open trucks, trucks fitted with rows of seats, front-to-back, back-to-back, six on a side. Army people sitting in rows, back-to-back facing out towards the ordinary people with their huge guns at the ready.

You sometimes see policeman with guns in South Africa. Sometimes, particularly in Joburg, you even see a JMPD officer with an AK. Sometimes they’re running roadblocks and one or two people have big guns, just in case. More often you see them on the cash-in-transit vans. People avoid the cash-in-transit security guards. Being too close to them increases the risk of dying.

In Maputo there are men with guns everywhere. But it seems it is not enough. Every building with fresh paint, has a private security guard. I come from the land where private security companies are king. But in South Africa the guards sit inside the guard-houses and in the fancy foyers of the many, many fancy buildings. Maputo has less fancy buildings and very few modern buildings. But outside those pretty buildings where the decay has been arrested with a coat or two of paint and there is something left to protect, there is a security guard sitting on a chair on the pavement. I suppose most of these guards don’t have guns. In the culture of men with big guns, one starts to assume.

I don’t know what it means. I am too far away to speculate. Mozambique is a society with huge disparity between rich (and tourist) and poor, it is a country with a terribly recent and horribly violent civil war. Perhaps it is a society where the guns are just a reminder of something else.

But it is also a country where we were struck by the lack of doing, the lack of agency. Perhaps it is purely my social conditioning and I am much, much too far away to make any real assessment of the situation but I found myself, all the time, thinking of the ‘men with guns’ and ‘Weeping’:

I knew a man who lived in fear.
It was huge, it was angry it was drawing near.
Behind his house, a secret place
was the shadow of the demon he could never face.
He built a wall of steel and flame
And men with guns to keep it tame.
Then standing back he made it plain
that the nightmare would never ever rise again.
But the fear the fire and the guns remained.