22:06, December 19, 2011. A red-eye flight somewhere between Maputo and Tete, Mozambique.
I’m writing this post from an excessively-spacious exit row seat – a nice bonus to finish up what’s been a really terrific last few days. The small airplanes employed for domestic flights in Mozambique usually leave me with barely enough room to wedge in my computer between my chest and the seat back in front of me, and as any fellow tall folks reading this post will agree, an unplanned exit row seat assignment is a blessing straight from the throne of Heaven. Ha.
The week that’s passed since my last post was filled with a nice mix of chaos and adventure. My MCC and CCM colleagues had planned several days of capacity-building meetings before CCM’s annual national conference on Thursday and Friday, but things went awry soon after our arrival in Maputo. After many months of waiting for news, we learned that the primary anticipated funder for the next several years of our program postponed any decision for at least six months (perhaps indefinitely), and that the planned national expansion of our work is thus without resources to get off the ground (which sounds sort of ironic, as the program’s acronym, ASA, means “wing” in Portuguese).
All plans of capacity building meetings were abandoned, and my colleagues and I instead spent the week in tense strategizing sessions, drafting concept papers and budgets for brand new project proposals. It looks like the next months will likely include very little construction or other activities, which, while certainly a disappointment for everyone involved, will probably actually be a good time of regrouping and planning for me and my colleagues in Tete. We’ve been working at a furious pace during the last six months, wrapping up the food security projects in Tete and Manica, and I’ve got a backlog of side projects awaiting a pause like this one. So, the week in Maputo wasn’t great, but we made real progress in picking up the pieces, and I see some potential silver linings in the midst of bad news. Mm.
As I mentioned in my last post, some of my friends and I took off to visit a new (to me) country this weekend: Swaziland! I knew very little about that country before moving to Southern Africa, so I thought it might be interesting to finish off this post by writing a bit about the 30-ish hours I spent there, and some of the things I saw and learned. Ready?
Swaziland is a very interesting, very beautiful country. Actually, perhaps that’s a good place to start: it’s not really a country at all, but a kingdom. There’s a real-life king, who has something like 50 wives, and he rules a kingdom of a little over a million Swazi people. It’s also known as a nation with one of (if not the) highest rates of HIV/AIDS in the world; if Wikipedia’s correct, over 26% of the population, and more than 50% of folks in their 20s, are infected.
Other than the high prevalence of HIV/AIDS and the current economic difficulties outweighing those of its growing neighbors, I’ve only got positive things to say about Swaziland and the people I met there. It’s a pretty small place; an island of lush, picturesque highlands and drier lowveld, dwarfed by Mozambique to the north and South Africa to the south. In addition to being one of the most beautiful countries I’ve visited thus far, it definitely earned the distinction as the most polite and welcoming – each stranger I met in the street would stop, remove his hat, offer a very warm greeting, and go out of his way to offer assistance for anything my friends and I might need, even to the point of significant personal inconvenience. It was crazy, humbling and rather wonderful, and I quickly found myself adopting the warmth and greeting folks in the same way. Love is pretty catchy, I think.
In addition to exploring two major cities, my friends and I also visited two game reserves, and saw lots of interesting animals and some amazing scenery. If I hadn’t had a flight back to Tete to catch this evening, I would have loved to spend more time in the national parks, which are crazy-cheap (about US$3 for a day pass) and quite striking. We went on a three-hour hike in one park yesterday (you can see a few photos below; others are on Facebook), and saw the tallest waterfall in the country. It was great.
Another thing I really liked about Swaziland was the attention given to anti-corruption and environmental conservation initiatives, all over the kingdom. I love Mozambique, but I think it’s yet to develop to the point where people have the time and resources to worry about those areas, and few things ruin an experience for me like corrupt officials and trashed landscapes. I wasn’t stopped by a single police officer in about 400km of driving in Swaziland, which seemed crazy, and I really appreciated the well-maintained, clean cities and roadways (and flowering trees growing along the sides!).
Despite its level of development, Swaziland still feels like Africa, and that struck me as both important and impressive. I stopped by a modern shopping mall this morning, and between groups of teenage hipsters sporting the latest fashions spotted a shirtless man in traditional Swazi garb: a skirt-like piece of fabric with an animal skin covering, and something like an intricately-tied scarf around his neck. It was a neat picture of colliding worlds, though I can’t imagine what he was buying (or where he kept his money).
So, in conclusion, should you one day find yourself in this part of the world (or if you already live here), I’d highly recommend a visit the Kingdom of Swaziland – it’s a unique, charming little nation, and well worth a few days’ stay.
Well, it looks like this flight is actually making a stop in a city called Quelimane on the way to Tete (this will make seven of the ten Mozambican provinces that I’ve visited in the past two weeks!), and we’re about to land, so I should probably wrap this post up here. I’m not sure when I’ll write next, as I’ll officially start my Christmas break on Wednesday, when I head off for about a week in the Zimbabwean bush. So, with that, I hope you all have a very merry Christmas, wherever you may be, and may the peace of Christ be with you as you connect with family and friends, reflecting on the year and looking forward to the next!
