Ponto D'Ouro

So big long post is overdue I guess. Well here it is!

For Team Days last weekend we went to Ponto D’Ouro (lit. Gold Point) which is a beach on the border with South Africa. This means that there are a lot more South African tourists there than Mozambicans.

Maputo from Catembe in the morning


We left early on Friday morning, crossing on the ferry across the river to Catembe. The ferry itself holds around 10 cars, though there were only a few on with us. The foot passengers just stand in between the cars. Catembe is just across the river but it’s already a different world from Maputo. The buildings are all small shacks and a few small brick buildings. The road is dirt, which is rather ironic considering just after there is a ferry there is a big sign which states that the government is spending 16 million meticais to pave the road and the project will be finished in Dec 2008. Hmmm, I wonder where that money ended up?

I think the government skipped a step


There are chapas that run every day to Ponto D’Ouro but they don’t have any schedule. They just sit there until they are full. In our case, we had to wait about 40 minutes until we had enough people. Then we started off on the dirt highway to Ponto D’Ouro. The distance is not so great, maybe 150 km, but because the road is poor the trip takes between 3 and 4 hours on average. After about an hour on a two lane dirt superhighway, we turned onto a smaller sand road. We went through acres and acres of open savannah (though different from the savannah I saw in Kenya) but saw no animals at all, which surprised me. We even went through the Maputo reserve, which featured a sign warning of alligators, hippos and elephants, but saw none. Too bad. Eventually we came to the border with South Africa, though we didn’t cross it. It was rather funny that we were driving on the sand road and just across the border was dark pavement. There is a big different that you can easily see between the infrastructure of the two countries. After climbing a few sand dunes, we finally arrived at our destination.

Ponto D’Ouro was a bit smaller than I had envisioned. It has two decent sized hotels along the beach and around 7 or 8 restaurants scattered around. There is a gas station and a supermarket (that was quite bare). Then there are the houses of the permanent and long term residents. We were staying in the vacation house of a friend of Daudo’s family. It was a one story building with 4 bedrooms, running water, a shower and a working toilet. Who could ask for more!

The team!


Our main purpose there was to do our planning for the next three months, so for Friday and Saturday we were pretty much focused on this task, just going out to eat and drink “Doshem”. The most common Mozambican beer is Lauretina, which I have mentioned before (the one that tastes like coffee). The other common brand is called 2M. In Portuguese 2 is Dois and M is, well, M. So as you arrive in Ponto there is a sign that says, in English for the South Africans, “In Ponto D’Ouro, just ask for a “Doshem”. So we did!


Note: this is not my picture since the billboard is old and faded now. From the nets.

The service was really slow (as to be expected) but the servers were friendly. At dinner one night a lady asked me if I was Irish. On Saturday while we were waiting for lunch we made a trip to the beach. The sand there is ridiculously soft, and also very hot! The water is quite blue and the scenery is nice.

The beach!


We were supposed to stay at Ponto D’Ouro until Monday but on Friday Daudo received a call saying that his driving exam (written) had been scheduled for Monday morning and couldn’t be changed. So Daudo had to leave early Sunday to get back and study (I told him he could study my 15 steps to driving like a Mozambican), while the rest of us stayed for a relaxing last day. We spent some more time on the beach and then I wandered off to do some shopping.

I found a really interesting shop called Magenta Moon which had all sorts of odd things, from herbal soaps, to afghans to dream catchers. They did, however, have a small collection of books, so I picked up another crime novel for too high a price. Then I wandered over to the craft fair. There were a lot of stand with many different things, most very similar or identical to the things we saw in Maputo and Nampula, only at 3 or 10 times the price. I was looking at some shirts made from capulanas and the guy came over to me. How much? 500 MT. Hmm, I can get this for 100 MT in Maputo. The guy just walked away. He wasn’t going to even try. I was looking at some t-shirts later and the guy told me they were 600 MT. We were talking and I mentioned that I was living in Maputo and he said he was from there. So I told him “well, if you are from Maputo, you should know that I can get this exact t-shirt there for 200 or 300 MT” and he said “yes”! Needless to say I didn’t buy anything, but I saw a lot of South Africans who did. Actually, the original prices were quoted to me in Rands, since they deal with that currency more often.

Magenta Moon


In the afternoon we packed up and went to the chapa station. We ended up waiting for around an hour and a half before the driver decided to leave. We were doing pretty well for time, until all of a sudden one of the tires started making a rubbing noise. The driver got worried and started going much slower, so we crawled the rest of the way back to Catembe.

From the Chapa on the way back


When we arrived Catembe had no power and then just as we got on the boat it started raining. What luck! We managed to cross the river and get a chopela before it started absolutely pouring.

Overall it was a really good weekend. We managed to get a lot of work done and we also enjoyed Ponto D’Ouro and managed to escape Maputo for a few days. We had told Vera not to come until Tuesday, but she called Lilian on Sunday to see if we needed her. She missed us!

Maputo at night from Catembe on the way back


In other news, there is a magazine published here called TVZine and this months edition featured an interview with Daudo and two pictures, one of him and one of the whole team. So I got my picture in a Mozambican magazine! Woo! Except that they said I was Jessica Parker :P Why do people always do that? Lots of people have been calling Daudo to congratulate him, which is pretty cool.

You can read it here: http://www.tvcabo.co.mz/tvzine (Abril 2010, guy with a scarf)

I think the summer here is finally ending. It’s still warm, but it’s been raining like stink and this morning I woke up freezing! I had to dig out the turtlenecks I brought for the first time in months. It’s nice to have a little break from the heat though. It means you can actually go from place to place in the city without dripping sweat.

Less that two weeks left until the big conference! I am getting excited! We have 25 people registered already and we should have another 25 by the end of this week. Things are pretty much on track, though I think there will be a little scrambling next week to get the last things ready.

Ok, I think you are now officially up to date.

Still Here!

Ahhh, lack of updates! I have the usual excuses. I’ve been very busy. I haven’t had much to say.

But here I am. This last weekend we had the second new member training. This one wasn’t quite as impressive, because this one was with the weaker of the two LCs, but we had some very strong candidates come and I think the LC will benefit from some excellent new members.

On Sunday I was extremely tired and just wanted to relax, so I grabbed a book from our “library”. It’s called “The Impact of War on Children” and it’s written by Graca Machel, the former Mozambican Minister of Education and now a representative of the United Nations. It’s from 2001, so it’s a little our of date, but it’s very interesting and has quite a few interesting cases, including some more recent conflicts that occurred during my lifetime, but when I was too young to know about it (Rwanda, Kosovo, Burundi). She raises a lot of good points, about health, education, and reintegration. Right now I am reading the chapter on Education. She suggests that education should continue if at all possible, even in times of war, and if it can’t, it should be resumed as soon as possible once the conflict is over. It gives communities a sense of stability to know the school is running and bring people back into a normal routine after very abnormal events.

She also gives several examples from the Mozambican civil war, including the fact that 45% of primary schools were destroyed and child soldiers were being employed regularly. It made me realize that since I have been here, nobody has talked about the civil war. They talk often of their independence and fighting against the Portuguese and build statues and name roads after the leaders. Yet the civil war is never mentioned. It’s a subject I would like to learn more about, but I feel awkward bringing it up. Just like Mozambique’s Communist phase. If it weren’t for the street names, you wouldn’t ever know it happened.

Of course, most of the people I am working with were just bring born as the war was ending, but I would still like to hear about what happened and why. A lot of the people in power within the country are those who went through both the independence and the civil war, so it definitely influences the country, even today.

My babies are all growed up!

I went to an AIESEC conference a few years ago and one of the facilitators said that being VP Talent Management (TM) is like being VP Mom. You take care of the members and manage their learning, from their first introduction to the organization.

Today we had the New Member Training (Discover Day) for the students we selected at UEM. There, presenting, leading activities, managing information, coordinating activities, were the students that just five months ago were in the same seat as the new members there today. And they did great! I was so impressed with their confidence, their knowledge and their passion. Not only did they take what we did and repeat it well, they added their own touches, their own style. I was so proud of them! I spent most of the day smiling.

When we cleaned up after the delegates had left, we packed all the boxes into the car of an alumnus who was giving us a ride home. The Exec team all walked off together, talking and laughing and so very much a team. It’s a moment I will remember for a long time.