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The ladybug and the letter
Once again trying to squeeze everything I own back into my backpack. Despite my little helper it actually won’t work this time, impossible.
The happiness I felt when moving in here and the amounts of love I have felt for this family and little Ava since, have now been replaced by a profound sadness. Having a new family in Mozambique has been of huge value and I have been inspired and learnt things that I will never allow myself to forget. I will miss this home a lot.
Two evenings ago, when putting Ava to bed, she asked me to tell her a story.
So I started by saying “Once upon a time there was a little ladybug sitting on a flower” immediately thinking to myself that this was the most boring intro to a story ever.. so the ladybug was sitting on the flower, which was her entire world, and her friends and family would come visit her sometimes to hang out.
One day, a little girl came and took the flower, taking it to her house far, far away. The ladybug didn’t know what was going on and she was both afraid and curious. But when the girl saw the ladybug, she took her out to the garden and put her on a big blue flower. The garden was huge and interesting, and a lot of different insects and animals approached the ladybug, one of them a scary looking blue headed lizard that proved to be a very good friend. So the ladybug had fun in her new world and she loved her new friends, but she was always missing her old garden, her family and the little boy who lived in that house, Gabriel.
“-But wait, I know Gabriel! So.. the little girl must be me!?”
The other ladybugs said that Ava and Gabriel actually go to school together and that it would be a chance for the ladybug to get back home.. so she jumped into Ava’s backpack, and after a long and dangerous adventure, jumping between the backpacks of 6 year olds, the ladybug finally made ir back to her old garden and her family. However, knowing now how to go beyond her life on the flower, the ladybug would now sometimes jump into Gabriels backpack to go back to Ava’s garden to meet her sweet ladybug friends, and the blue headed lizard she always misses so much.
It wasn’t supposed to be this cheesy, it just happened. Most important is that Ava liked it, and I noticed only afterwards what I had actually told her, realizing that improvising stories brings out a lot of subconcious feelings.
I got this letter today:
“Caroline I love you greetings Ava kiss and hug”
So I’m not leaving Maputo yet, but I’m already somehow on my way. There have been no indications convincing enough for me to know that I will be staying, not yet, and my mind is starting to adjust to the thought of going back to the cold. Maybe even accepting it as an inevitable fact. Let’s see.
Green stuff
– So what do you eat over there?
– Different things. A lot of sea food, European food, sometimes sushi, and a lot of Mozambican dishes, of course.
– What’s the Mozambican food like?
– It’s nice! It doesn’t necessarily look great, but it mostly is.
– Ooh, I want to see – blog a photo!
– Haha, really? Do you really think it would be interesting?
– Ah come on, I’m curious. Do it!
So on request, I give you today’s very Mozambican dinner: Matapá de Abóbora com xima.
Translating it, it’s basically cooked pumpkin leaves with a lot of coconut milk and some shrimps, accompanied by a kind of corn mash that keeps you full for two days. Very tasty stuff, if you ask me.
Back
And just as infallibly as always, it cured everything. The sad face, the sore throat, the melancholy, the boredom and the uncertainty. There is nothing in the world that can compare to the wonders that dancing does to me, my body and my mood. I’m back on track again.
The painting above is from Núcleo de Arte here in Maputo, the Sunday hangout venue where art meets live music, grilled food, expats, rastas, dancers, painters and – unfortunately I don’t know the name of the artist.
(The sore throat might also have been cured by a wonder-spray that I got from a friend and sprayed onto my non-existent tonsils a couple of times. And the bottle of wine we shared the same day while painting our nails and talking about girly stuff.)
Face2Face
Diagnosis
It’s raining pretty badly in Maputo this weekend, and I’m still not 100% back on my feet. What about giving me a diagnosis, my dear super smart friends?
For more than a week now, I have had:
1. A sore and slightly swollen throat, in the place where my right tonsil would have been, had it not been removed.
2. A bitter taste in the back of my mouth.
3. A body temperature below 36 degrees.
4. A slow/sad mood.
I had strep almost monthly when I was a kid, usually without fever. This is the reason to why my tonsils were removed seven years ago – and I have basically not had infections in the throat since then.
I have some serious trust issues here in Maputo after hearing horror stories about the healthcare and after trying it myself.. basically, it costs a fortune, takes forever, and the doctors tell you nothing new. And ooh – if you insist, you get medicine that might have been banned in Europe many years ago.
Anyway, If there’s something that really upsets me it’s doctors that write prescriptions for strong antibiotics without being sure about the diagnosis. Oh, and a random detail: when selling pills here, they take the exact amount out of the box in the pharmacy – so you really have to beg to get the pamphlet that is supposed to accompany the pills.
Anyway, I will see if I can indulge in ginger/lemon/honey tea to treat this, hoping that it’s not streptococcis. And if it doesn’t get any better soon I might go for another study visit to a Maputo clinic. You’re joining, right?
b2b vs. transparency
I guess that excellent colleagues pep-talking me via Skype while others send me love via Whatsapp is really reason enough to shake those irrationally blue feelings off and get back to business.
…anyhow – it’s already Friday.
Damn it, I’m so transparent that I don’t even need to say anything before people start telling me that I “look different” today, that there is something missing – “Where is all that positive energy of yours? We need it!”.
Is it really that obvious that I’m having a bad day? Maybe I need a crash course in faking “feeling great” because I really don’t know how to.
