Work and tigers.

19:14, February 27, 2012. My house, Tete, Mozambique.

Hi everyone! I’m sorry for what’s been a rather low-density blogging month; I’ve spent most of my waking hours these past weeks behind a computer, and while it’s been good to have some time in the office to catch up on projects long set aside, I’ve tried to be intentional about staying away from screens during the evening hours. : )

I recently realized just how little time I have left in Mozambique, and it’s begun to feel like each new day whizzes by faster than the last. The laundry list of work ideas sitting on my desktop, also known as my MCC Annual Plan, was already fairly ambitious in its inception, and I think that the inverse relationship between days left in my contract and the addition of new projects to the list has become very nearly linear. For you non-math folks out there, that essentially means that I love my job, and just don’t have enough time left to do it.  

In addition to work, I’ve been trying to wring every ounce of joy and adventure out of life in Africa; in the past month that’s looked like homemade chicken enchiladas, games of tag with a friend’s pet vervet monkey, cliff diving into a seasonal river, cooking lessons with Cheng, afternoon runs in the bush, and my newfound (or rediscovered) passion for fishing.

As some of you may remember, I live just a few kilometers away from the widest river in Africa, and, according to a professional fisherman friend, it’s home to over 1,000 different species of fish (along with the crocs and hippos). Can you believe that? The list is as diverse as it is long, too, and includes electric catfish, giant bream, freshwater eels, and man-eating bull sharks (known as Zambezi sharks in this part of the world). It also features what may be the most sought-after gamefish in Africa, and something that I’ve wanted to catch ever since seeing a photo during my first few weeks in Tete: the tigerfish.

Tigerfish are epic. As best as I can describe, they’re somewhat like a cross between a salmon (in size and fight) and a piranha (in ferocity and teeth). You can read more about them here, on Wikipedia, but suffice it to say that they’re killing machines, and big ones in the Zambezi, which can grow to well over 30lbs, are quite a handful both in and out of the water.

Two of my Zimbabwean friends, Patrick and Diddy, invited me to go bank fishing with them yesterday, and we spent a beautiful morning hanging out and getting our lines wet. The river is quite muddy from the recent rains, so we used bait, and about an hour into the excursion I hooked into my first tiger! It was only a baby, about the size of an average trout back home, but I was so pumped (or “chuffed”, as the Zimbabweans would say) to have finally caught one. Here are a few pictures, so you can get an idea of how hardcore even the little guys are:

 

I drove over the river twice today, and each time felt a very strong urge to go home and grab my rod. Ha. I don’t know exactly how it’s going to work out, but I think I’m going to start fishing for an hour or so before work, a few days each week, to see if I can catch another tiger in the few months I have left here (or one of the other 999 species). I’ll keep you posted.

Hope you all have a great week!