And there won't be snow in Africa this Christmas time

To make the run up to Christmas a little more festive, Stebba and I have taken to baking and eating Christmas treats. The only problem being that Maganja da Costa doesn’t offer much in the field of gastronomy, and due to the lack of ovens, everything has to be fried or boiled. Lots of the ingredients also have to be bought in Quelimane.

However, after putting our heads together, getting those creative juices flowing, we have come up with some delicious, and not particularly healthy things to cheer us up after a long day trying to build a house. Feel free to try them out.

Pancakes
Bananas fried in condensed milk (good in the pancakes or with kitkat crumbled over the top)
Chocolate/oat/coconut truffles
Frozen bananas covered in chocolate and cashew nuts/coconut
Packet chocolate pudding with banana and coconut

Things we are planning on making
Pina Colada
Mango Sorbet
Pineapple Ice
Icelandic Christmas Rice Pudding

We’ve also made an advent wreath, which was completely dead after a couple of hours. To make it vaguely resemble holly, Stebba painted some beans (and her hands) red and stuck them on. Unfortunately I can't load photos on at the moment, but come back another time and you'll see lovely pictures of us lighting the advent wreath each sunday.

Tomorrow we are heading back to Maganja. The internet connection has been awful, and consequently the blogs are not at the standard we had hoped. We have lots of great photos, but we'll have to load them up after New Year. We aren't planning on coming back to Quelimane for quite some time. After Christmas we are heading to the beach at Pebane for New Years to get rid of our workers tans and eat lots and lots of prawns. In early January we are going up north to Nampula to buy capulanas for the project and more beach and sight-seeing at Ilha de Mocambique.

We hope you all have a wonderful Christmas holiday. Think of me and Stebba, in our beautiful new house, singing Band Aid's 'Do they know it's Christmas?', trying to make Christmas dinner on a coal fire and trying to feel festive in 40 degree heat.

And in case you were wondering, yes, they do know it's Christmas. And it does snow in some places. And things do grow. And there's a lot of rain too. Bob Geldolf and Midge Ure should have done some research.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

$1 a day challenge

A large percentage of people in Mozambique live on less than $1 (about 27MTn), so I'm going to try and live on 25Mtn a day for a month. I need some help with conditions for the challenge.
 
Importantly, I won't have a lump sum at the beginning of the month from which i can buy a bag of coal, rice etc. I get 25 on the first day, so if i need to buy something big i'll have to save up for it.

I can accept food from people, and I can use my cellphone (please).
 
Do people have ideas of certain big things i should buy or do during the challenge?
So far I have come up with:
 
* an item of clothing
* an alcholic drink
* fix my bicycle
 

Fun and Games in Quelimane & New Blogsite

I'm sorry I haven't written my blog for such a long time. We've been having far too much fun crying at the immigration office and screaming at the builders.

I'm in the process of setting up a new blog for our project. The link is on the side of the page. I'm going to do some cut and pasting, but if you want to know all about the joys of building a house in Africa, it's in a lot of detail there.

One benefit of having nothing to do in Queliamane and Maganja was that we were able to talk to each other about what we wanted to achieve in Mozambique and what kind of projects we were interested in. We made 'Plan B' as a back up if the ActionAid volunteer positions fell through.

We felt that women lacked the opportunity to speak freely among themselves. Their roles, especially in rural areas, were primarily as wives and mothers. Women in Iceland and the UK have the possibility of meeting with friends discuss, advise, console and complain. We have access to a whole wealth of information: books, internet, magazines, television and radio.

We thought we could improve the lives of marginalised women by increasing access to information, access to training and accessibility to other women in similar situations to exchange ideas and advice.

Neither of us have any experience and knew that most projects were likely to fail, but we were very determined to get the project off the ground. We had so me good, clear ideas, and lots of motivation.

I'm not going to write anymore about the project or the house, as it will just be repeating the other blog. I will say that it has completely consumed our lives. We are up everyday by 5a.m. and sometimes much earlier. I started reading a book called 'The State of Africa' a few weeks ago, and since the project begun, i haven't touched it. I only write my diary sporadically, and dream about building houses three times a week.


The only 'break' from building the house has been coming to Quelimane, for one of two reasons. One has been to buy building materials that are unavailable in Maganja. I am now quite capable of talking about construction in Portuguese, and even the odd word in local dialect as well.

The second diversion from the house, not nearly as exciting as paint, nails, locks and iron bars, is getting a new visa. I bought a six month multiple entry visa in London which stated that I had to leave the country every 60 days. Stebba bought her six month multiple entry visa in Nelspruit, South Africa (at nearly a quarter of the price), but has to leave the country every 30 days. After the trauma of the Malawi trip we paid a visit to the Immigration office - not only to tell them that it doesn't take 2 hours to get there, it takes 4 days - but to buy new visas. We knew it was possible to buy six month single entry visas, but not easy.

One Monday morning we set off from Maganja at 4a.m. (after finding a rat running around the kitchen & not eating any breakfast) with a nice letter explaining to the nice boss at immigration why it was really necessary for us to get these visas. We arrived in the hot, hot heat and were told that they couldn't possibly accept the letter because it wasn't nice and straight and the nice boss could only accept nice, straight letters. We should go and get a nice new one, we were told. We said, nicely, that it wasn't really possible as Maganja was a long way away and the paper would just get crumpled on the way back. They still wouldn't accept it.

So, Stefania and I wandered up and down the street asking random people outside their houses if they had an iron we could borrow. Except we didn't know the word for iron. So we mimed ironing clothes, and they all thought we were crazy and told that they didn't have one we could use. (it's ferro, in case you ever need to know). We eventually went to a friends house, ironed the letters and went back to immigration where we were told that the nice boss was away until Friday and we should come back then.

On Friday, after another 3 hour chapa ride, they made us sit in the office for 2 hours, just to make us squirm, and were then told by the not-so-nice boss that we couldn't get them - we semi-shouted on the verge of tears - and they eventually agreed. Two weeks later, they're still not ready.