Remember Me??!

Hello all,

I’ve been in Tofo nearly 3 months and in that time I’ve never really sent you a proper email. Shame on me!! Mum was berating me on the phone saying that I’ve never said this little about a place I’ve lived in before, but I’m not so sure that’s true. Don’t remember writing to you from Indonesia very much! Well, as my time here draws to a close, I thought perhaps I should fill in the gaps.

After I decided to stay in Tofo, I moved into a flat with 2 work colleagues for a week, this being the place where I had the majority of my valuables stolen. Then she got chucked out because they wanted the equivilant of half a months rent per day….! We were homeless for all of 2 hours before scoring Casa Azul, a house literally on the beach and the only one in Tofo that can honestly say that. Joan warned us it might not be pretty but we were only too glad to find a place to live in. Adele moved in the top half with Sean and I moved into the bottom with Paul and Nadine (an American couple who have since become very good friends). There was only one bedroom so unsurprisingly they got that and I took over the kitchen/sitting room which thankfully did have a bed. At that time we had sporadic electricity and not much water. Still it was a roof.

Most houses in Tofo have to fill up their water tanks at certain times of the day, the maid was filling ours (which is on the roof) but forgot to turn it off. The upstairs flat (whose bathroom is in the kitchen) flooded and it came through to ours too. Not so much the water, but on my next visit to the toilet, I glanced up and noticed a big crack in the ceiling and lots of plaster on the floor. We spent the next 6 weeks worrying that the toilet upstairs was going to coming crashing through onto our heads!

Being right on the beach, the house was frequently damp and the floor covered with sand. This was particularly annoying when there were storms. We had one for 3 days (mini-cyclone) right after new years. Lightening danced around our house and the wind howled whilst I huddled on my bed praying our house would survive intact. The rain continued moreoreless torrential for 3 days. Now, we don’t have proper windows but mosquito nets with glass slats that can be wound up and down. This combined with various leaks meant that whilst not quite flooded, everything was wet, wet. In fact, that could be repeated again. WET! Even moving my bed into the middle of the room, it was still wet. Nadine laughed herself silly when she returned to the house to find me huddled up in my bed sleeping in a puddle and Paul doing the same in his. Needs must!

It was during these 3 days (obviously no diving) that we had a very strange break-in. Now in Mozambique, everyone has things stolen. If you stay here longer than a week, you will have something stolen. Even a local guy who works as a divemaster had his house broken into and most of his things taken. The most frustrating/upsetting part is that you know that someone you know, knows who did it. This is a small town. They probably watched them taking the things. We were doing a barbie (or braii in south African) under a tiny bit of roof in the back of the house for 8 people who were all starving because there was no electricity and none of the restaurants were open. Doing a barbie by candlelight is a challenge. Thankfully the rain was quite slight and even stopped for a while. With the braii, we were going to have some creamed corn – we’d even seen the tin early in the day when we made a mini fortress to try and stop the wind blowing the gas stove out. It was missing. Three of us looked for 20 minutes, but no creamed corn to be found.

The next day I discovered that this was not the only item to have been appropriated – my purple fin bag had also gone as well as my travel hairbrush (it folded up! How cool is that?). None of the items were ever seen again. Not sure how it happened. Even if someone was being opportunistic, you’d have thought they’d take my nice hiking boots (lying next to the fin bag) or some of the other tins of food as well. As it is, when I’d stopped fuming about the ridiculousness of it all, I was grateful they didn’t just decide to walk out with my rucksack that had most of my money in it and my camera (my remaining valuable).

Paul beats my stolen story when someone nicked all of his clothes from his car including one of every shoe. It was winter and he had to deliver pizza in the snow wearing shorts, t-shirt and sandals. Needless to say he got a lot of tips.

On Christmas day, I returned to the house to pick up some rum and coke as I’d been invited round to Andy (another colleague) house for prawn and crayfish dinner, only to find myself unable to open the door when I tried to leave the room. Paul, Nadine and I were all in the house at the time and we could not get the door open. It was not locked. The handle had gone so it didn’t twist the necessary mechanisms. After a fruitless 30 minutes of trying to get the door open. We took the window slats out of the bedroom window and ripped the mosquito net off. Paul wanted to use one of the other windows as their was a big spiky plant immediately outside, but I pointed out this might be quite difficult considering they all had metal bars on them. The plant turned out not to be spiky after all. I arrived in dinner just in time to stop Andy pinching my crayfish.

Casa Azul had a lot of problems, most of which Paul had to sort out as the man of the house. I never minded it so much – the candles, filling up buckets of water from a tap outside, cooking spagetti bolognaise on the braii cause nothing else works – all felt very frontier to me. Plus I loved being on the beach. The view was amazing and whenever I was at home I’d sit on the patio. Everynight the sea would lull me to sleep and wake me up in the morning. Ok, to be fair Nadine would wake me up in the morning. Nevertheless when Keri had to move house because her roof had blown off in the storm – it made sense for Nadine and Paul to go with her. Paul, in particular, did not want to spend one more minute in that house. At that time we hadn’t had electricity for over a week. The rest of Tofo did though. Go figure. It didn’t seem likely I would be staying because the storm had frightened off most of the holidaymakers and both hostels evacuated their guests – one because of flooding and one because their septic tank overflowed. We had no divers.

In a bizarre quirk of fate, they ended up in Adele’s old house, the one where my valuables were originally taken from. I was welcome to stay as long as I liked, and the sofa was still as comfortable as it had ever been. Andy’s flatmate returned to Germany for 6 weeks and I am now sleeping in his room. The first time I’ve had a room to myself since I left the UK! Very nice ; ) It even has an en-suite bathroom! And lots of cockroaches ; (

New Year was a fun occasion. I wasn’t looking forward to it very much as New Year’s always seem to go flat, but I ended up going for a buffet dinner at the cunningly named “Hotel” which overlooks the beach. Lots of seafood, steak, chicken, chips, salad and rum and coke (which we cheated and brought in ourselves – they’d been cheeky and put their prices up for the busy season. No way! It is actually a constant source of consternation that western locals are charged the same price as tourists even though we are not in the same financial bracket as them.

Also, we know how much drinks actually cost them. This has led to some boycotting of particular institutions, but half the time we have to give in and go back just because there are so few places to frequent). Vodacom had sponsored a big gig which was taking place just outside the Hotel, so we had a good view of the bands and the thousands of people, mostly Mozambiquans who were attending. On a busy day, you might get 50 people on the beach. It was strange to have so many here!

After dinner we watched some of the bands and then went to dance the night away at Dino’s the main bar. This was also jam-packed. Arriving home at 4am, I discovered Paul cooking – he’d left hours ago to go to bed…. ? We ended up having a 2 hour conversation about feminism before I finally hit the sack and he organized some kids to clear up the beach which now had so much rubbish and bottles on it that you could barely see the sand anymore. What a star! At midnight there was a massive firework display, which was wicked, before the inevidable kissing. I always thought that “firework planning” was a bit of a farce but now that I’ve seen a display that was clearly not very well thought out, it must be harder than it looks! All in all, a great night.

Since I have been in Tofo I’ve learnt how to gut and prepare fish! Very useful. I’ve also done a lot of baking. Surprised? I certainly am. I’ve been making pies, cakes and flatbread regularly and have acquired a bit of a rep as a good baker. As I have no scales and no recipes I’m pretty impressed that any of it turned out well.

A couple of weeks ago it was Keri’s birthday and we had a prawn braii on the beach with a fair amount of alcohol and a bonfire thrown in. We’re pretty sociable in the evenings even though we all see each other at work and often have dinners around at each other’s house and play games. Yea! Like scrabble, boggle and yhatzee. There are other local westerners who we often see but many of them have taken advantage of this quiet period to go back to south Africa for a break or to pick up things etc. The internet shop was shut for 3 weeks after the storm because her roof leaked and she had to go back to SA to pick up some new gear.

So one massive email for you. I've had a relaxing day today. I got up late, had a cooked breakfast – it’s now midday so internet time, then I think I’ll go sunbathing for a bit and a walk on the beach. The main bay which I can see from my house is usually quite flat (sea and beach), but there’s another bay around the corner, where the surfers go which has big sand dunes, and I think I’ll walk there.

Hope you are all well and happy,
Lots of love
Kx

P.S. The dive shop has sortof adopted a baby monkey. His mum was killed and Andrea (a manta ray scientist) is looking after him but he loves people so he comes over all the time. He’s really cute with a tiny face, big ears and a long tail. He’ll jump all over you and cry when you try and leave him behind. Ahhhhhh! Savannah, the dive shop cat, is quite aggressive but Spank scares him. Just about the only thing that does. Spank will try and touch Savannah and they end up chasing around the shop. Brilliant!