Mozambique

Well so it has became clear that our organizing skills are just mesmerizingly non-existing, so the day before the girls the journey began the girls and I decided to leave for Mozambique. So with no planning whatsoever we emptied our room, packed our stuff, ate breakfast in a slow pace and opened the gates of Bombasos to leave for an improvised one week vacation. First I didn’t believe that we would even make it, so with every step we took It seemed that we really were going to fulfill what we had been talking for months.

(this is me and Kerttu in the combi station)

In our trip we became magnets of people from Finland. Waiting for the combi from Manzini to Maputo (for 4 hours) we met a Finnish couple who were travelling around the world. In Maputo we met a couple of Finnish girls doing their internship, saw another finnish group of 7 people, and in a supermarket a little boy came to talk to us in  perfect finnish and his finnish nanny. I mean Finland has only a population of 5 million people!!? HOW IS THIS EVEN POSSIBLEEE???!!

(I had a lovely nap in the combi station xD Susanna took a picture from the combi...)

(this is my travelling braid)

The night we arrived to Maputo a guy came talking to me while I was staring at a poster that advertised an Afro-swing event in Maputo and he offered me free tickets when I told him that I used to dance lindy-hop. It was just unbelievable, a combination of Zulu dance and classic Charleston, step and lindy-hop. In the combi to Maputo we also met a half Russian half Mozambiquean Greek-orthodox priest who studies theology in Egypt and acted as our guide in Maputo. He took us to his church wearing a shirt that stated “I don’t get drunk, I get awesome”, changed his priest robes in the back and gave us a prayer in Greek, Russian and every other language he knew. He also openly carried a knife and bragged about how no one has ever beaten him in a fight. In Maputo I could talk in Spanish with everyone, and it reminded me of Mumbai and it’s kind of a crazy city and I don’t know what it tells about me but I felt cozy even the girls didn’t feel comfortable there.

We left for Tofo at 5 am in the morning in a chapa (a mozambiquean combi) aaand arrived 8 hours later to paradise. We stayed in a backpackers called fatimas and met tons of people and even more finns. A couple who just had opened a diving centre called liquid adventures that took us to an ocean safari but we were unlucky because 3 of the girls ended up throwing up because of sea sickness and we only saw dolphins from a distance. Me and Kerttu decided to try our luck again and went to another ocean safari even I was terrified by the idea of swimming with humongous animals and Kerttu was terrified by her proneness to seasickness. 

(This is Susanna displeased with the dis-commodity of the combi seats)

But It might have been one of the best decisions of our lifes to leave because the captain of the boat sayed he hadn’t had a safari like that ever before. Whalesharks don’t usually move in packs and usually they just pass instead of sticking around the boat. So when we saw the first one I jumped hyperventilating to the water but when I saw this beautiful 8 meter “örrimörriäinen” I just felt this huge serenity and could breathe perfectly fine. It was such an indescribable experience swimming a couple of meters away from that beautiful animal, I followed it for at least 5 minutes until I just couldn’t keep up with it anymore, jumped to the boat again and jumped in front of another one that came from down the boat with its friendly huge mouth smiling at me. 

(Our lovely friend Peter and his daughter from Swaziland and our new friend Sebastian spending a lovely day in a small costal city near Tofo)

At many points I had to move my hand for not touching the creature because it would pass just centimeters away. Following one of the whalesharks a huge manta appeared from bellow six meters away and later we say also another one. I was just overflowing with happiness at that point and the atmosphere was incredible, people were cheering up when the boats were surrounded with whalesharks coming from different directions, we could count around 7 of them. I definitely learnt that even you have some expectations of how are you going to react to something you cannot let your fears bound you, because our fears are just a cage of our own minds, we should always push our boundaries.

After snorkeling I really felt I could fly and I left with high hopes to a surfing lesson that didn't work as well x_D... but at least I got to make an anthropological discovery about surf teachers. Based on my little experience from Ponta de oro and Tofo the same laws of nature that applies to the nurses in the pokemon world applies to the appearance of surf teachers. Medium size men with shoulder length blond hair bleached by the sun and broad shoulders. 

(This is me and Kerttu imitating the looks of some masks  in Tofo)

 The same day we received terrible news about our friend who had passed away in Swaziland during his internship. I first couldn’t believe what I heard and it just didn’t make sense because we had just been talking with him planning a trip to his hometown in Greece for next summer. So we were awake all night remembering all of our great moments together and all that we have learned from him and at 4 o’clock in the morning with 0 sleep left Tofo and went back to Maputo. In Maputo we left right away taking first a ferry and then an overloaded chapa to Ponta de oro that is only 150 km away but in chapa took 6 hours in the bumpiest road that I had even been to. Exhausted we arrived at 10 to Ponta and haunted for any cheap accommodation for the night. We meet friends in Ponta and stayed for 3 nights there. Ponta also was beautiful but it was clear that it was kind of a South-African colony in Mozambique, especially from people coming from Johannesburg and Pretoria. On Sunday we left to Swaziland and were surprised by crazy storm with rocks falling from the mountains and arrived late to the southafrican border and there weren’t any combis leaving anymore so we hitchhiked, luckily the guys who took us ended up being friends of friends and took us all the way to Mbabane even they were originally going to Manzini.

 In Mbabane is raining like crazy right now but in 10 days time we will part for Capetown and try our way to Namibia and Botswana apparently with our typical no-planning style. Wish us luck! :D

Ubuntu

 First of all I will share with you how the structure of the majority of the conversations that I, (and the rest of the Finn ladies) have with unknown Swazi men:

Swaziman: Hello

Me (or other white girl): hello, how are you?

Swaziman: I love you (or alternatively) I want to marry you.

……. huoh! If you ever come to Swaziland I’ll give you the correct answer to that statement. You have to ask:  Do you have the emalobolo for me?= Meaning do you have the 17 cows that you have to pay as dowry. AAAAAAND you’ll get at least 3 conversations like that in a day, 7 if you go to a combi station.

My dear Lwazi twisted her ankle walking through gravel in 15 cm high heels, so she hasn’t been able to walk during the entire weekend. So lately I have started to wonder, WHYYY!!!??? Why do we women go through all that suffering? One of the most complicated things that I have had to do lately was to get into my super skinny tight jeans after 2 months of intensive hippism! I just don’t see the point anymore in wearing jeans that are literally radiography of your ass. And I realized that this is a process that started a couple of years back. First I stopped using fake eyelashes, then I stopped straightening my hair (What I was even thinking? My hair is straight already!), then I stopped using high heels and lately I have been the happiest person just wearing long skirts, comfy pants, useful clothing and using makeup in rare occasions. And I am completely happy and satisfied :3 actually I haven’t feel so sure about myself and have this feeling of self-awareness ever before and it’s just to liberating. Soon I’ll be able to put a garbage bag on and feel like a princess, and even if I looked like shit I could always go for a self-esteem raising walk to the combi station to fetch some proposals.

This is the contrast that I have been talking about. AAAAAAAAAAGHHH I love the blue mountains and that fresh green <3<3

I have a favorite thing about African culture: The spirit of Ubuntu. Meaning the spirit of humanity, the capacity to see other people and feel the bond that unites us.  Poverty rates are so high in Africa and the only reason that people don’t starve is because the feeling of responsibility that they have towards one another. Ubuntu is all about understanding that we live in community with others and that you have to acknowledge others people’s needs because like I’ve heard many swazi say: “we live because of others”. We could show a little ubuntu because the food has run out in our care point centre. So we made a collection and raise enough money to keep the place running for a couple of weeks while waiting for the donations from the church. 

AAAnd yess, the pictures dont have anything to do with what I have been writing of. But they are prrretiiieeeee <3<3<3 :3 ^^

MUMU!

I asked the girls to teach me a song in Siswati. They taught me to sing a very traditional song that is mainly sung in the reed dance, and it goes like this:

//“Nmage nmfombi mine nmfombi. Aupegelelipagalashugela nmfombi” //

The direct translation is: “I am a virgin yes a virgin, look this is my sugar package (the dance involves pointing at your genitalia)” xDDDDDD… And the worst part is that it has a tune that keeps sounding forever in my mind. So I been singing it everywhere and people keep on laughing.

We also have a theme song in Mantabene. We taught them this song that is called “funky monkey” that also involves a crazy dance. The kids already will be waiting for us acting like a monkey and dancing adorably. So when Kerttu googled backpackers in Nelspruit,it was clear for us:

“funky monkey” was the only option.

 

Instantly I felt home, a bunch of friendly looking people, a clean nice pool, very bohemian decoration, a pool table, and the best of all; they had a parrot!!!!<3<3<3<3 So we did some nightly swimming, performed the song “funky monkey” to the owners of the place and the rest of the night we spent with really lovely people.

Then at 5 o’clock in the morning we left to Kruger National Park in a safari car. I attended first grade in a town in northern Spain called Llodio. I remember that we had a library we could use in our school and I used to love this book about an elephant called Mumu. When we moved to southern Spain my teacher gave me that book as a present in name of our class. So my subconsciousness remind me of my awesome childhood and seeing elephants as described in that book made me tear a little:`)  aaaand the baby ones made me tear a lot! And then everything else, giraffes, zebras, hyenas… It’s like being in a nature documentary movie. I really felt and feel SOOO very lucky :3 And not only because of having the opportunity to be in Kruger, but also because I have the best family in the world and my childhood was so safe and lovely. <3<3<3

Elephant family<3<3<3

From Kruger we rode to the northern frontier of Swaziland. I wish I had a picture to show the beautiful contrast between the green fields of sugar cane and the Blue Mountains we passed in our way to Ngonini. I was carrying Kerttu’s ukulele with me and the boarder staff requested a song, so I asked the finns to join and we had a little improvised performance and they let us through very quickly J

So from Monday to Thursday we stayed in Ngonini. Who would have thought that I would find myself doing research in a small town in northern Swaziland oO. We interviewed in couples 120 homesteads about domestic abuse with a team of swazi, finns, Botswana and Zambia students. It was a busy week and we worked very hard but it was really a great experience, specially hanging out with these amazing young Swassy (a convination of Swazi+ sassy) women. And there was a couple of weeks old kitties!! 

Aaand million things more that happened in the way … I am coming back to Africa, that’s for sure! <3<3<3<3<3<3 Life is good!