African Ice Cream Truck
I can hardly believe it's already December, it can't help that the sun has been a scorching ball of fire this week. It is just hot. You walk outside, hot. You walk out of your air conditioned room to take a shower, hot. You leave to bike around the area for multiple hours, hot. You get the idea, it's hot. The sky gods did not grace us with any rain this week but the forecast looks promising.
If it seems like I am doing a lot of complaining don't worry I am doing fine, I am happy, but yeah it is hot and I am sweating buckets.
I guess I'll talk about the title. Mozambique is a very interesting country and every major city is surprisingly different. Quelimane might be the best example. Unlike any other city in Mozambique, in Quelimane bikes are extremely common and chapas are virtually non-existant. Unlike any other city in Mozambique, Quelimane has a very impressive road repair team, they work around the clock (I assume) to fix potholes in about 2 weeks. Its weird but in the short time I have been here I have seen potholes get fixed and whole road sections get replaced. There's a section of road they are replacing and Saturday I saw a whole crew of dudes out there breaking it up, mixing ashphalt and pouring it in. All with no machinary and only the simplest of tools. They were just going at it, getting it down. It was impressive, especially since Beira has potholes that have only been partially repaired since the day we got here.
Sorry I got a little distracted there by effective road repair. So, another unique thing in Quelimane are the "African Ice Cream Trucks." Unfortunately "Dude on a bike with a cooler full of home-made popsicles with a horn" would be more accurate. But Quelimane has it. All throughout the city random guys bike around, honking horns (like those ones where you squeeze the little ball with your hand and it sounds like clown horns, yeah those). And when you call out to them, they bike on over and for the small price of 5 Metacais (about 8 cents) you can buy a popsicle (a home-made one and no I don't know what's in it). Anyway, it's pretty exciting out here in Quelimane.
This week, the brakes on Elder Lacerda's bike broke and normally that would be fairly easy to fix but he rides a mountain bike and literally none of the repair guys know how to fix mountain bikes, only the cheap city bikes that everyone has. So he has been riding around without any brakes. The bikes here remind of me most of the cars here, only one small problem away from breaking down. I know that one day my bike definitely will break down, but for now I am going to treat it well and be grateful I am riding a nice new bike.
Later in the week we got news about travelling to Nampula for Zone Conference, we'll see how it goes but it is definitely going to take a hit on our work in the area. We'll probably be gone for about 5 days. On the other side I will probably get to spend some time in Napipine (which was my first area in Mozambique) and see a lot of people I know.
Fortunately we will get back in time for the wedding coming up on Christmas eve. It should be pretty sweet.
That's about everything for this week. Not a whole lot of stories this week but things are going well.
If it seems like I am doing a lot of complaining don't worry I am doing fine, I am happy, but yeah it is hot and I am sweating buckets.
I guess I'll talk about the title. Mozambique is a very interesting country and every major city is surprisingly different. Quelimane might be the best example. Unlike any other city in Mozambique, in Quelimane bikes are extremely common and chapas are virtually non-existant. Unlike any other city in Mozambique, Quelimane has a very impressive road repair team, they work around the clock (I assume) to fix potholes in about 2 weeks. Its weird but in the short time I have been here I have seen potholes get fixed and whole road sections get replaced. There's a section of road they are replacing and Saturday I saw a whole crew of dudes out there breaking it up, mixing ashphalt and pouring it in. All with no machinary and only the simplest of tools. They were just going at it, getting it down. It was impressive, especially since Beira has potholes that have only been partially repaired since the day we got here.
Sorry I got a little distracted there by effective road repair. So, another unique thing in Quelimane are the "African Ice Cream Trucks." Unfortunately "Dude on a bike with a cooler full of home-made popsicles with a horn" would be more accurate. But Quelimane has it. All throughout the city random guys bike around, honking horns (like those ones where you squeeze the little ball with your hand and it sounds like clown horns, yeah those). And when you call out to them, they bike on over and for the small price of 5 Metacais (about 8 cents) you can buy a popsicle (a home-made one and no I don't know what's in it). Anyway, it's pretty exciting out here in Quelimane.
This week, the brakes on Elder Lacerda's bike broke and normally that would be fairly easy to fix but he rides a mountain bike and literally none of the repair guys know how to fix mountain bikes, only the cheap city bikes that everyone has. So he has been riding around without any brakes. The bikes here remind of me most of the cars here, only one small problem away from breaking down. I know that one day my bike definitely will break down, but for now I am going to treat it well and be grateful I am riding a nice new bike.
Later in the week we got news about travelling to Nampula for Zone Conference, we'll see how it goes but it is definitely going to take a hit on our work in the area. We'll probably be gone for about 5 days. On the other side I will probably get to spend some time in Napipine (which was my first area in Mozambique) and see a lot of people I know.
Fortunately we will get back in time for the wedding coming up on Christmas eve. It should be pretty sweet.
That's about everything for this week. Not a whole lot of stories this week but things are going well.
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| Biking around |
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| Elder Lacerda and I |
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| Me, my bike and 10 kg of rice |
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| Family night with the Branch |
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