Life in Pemba

The first week has flown by. I arrived at my new home town last Tuesday afternoon to 26 degrees, hot and sunny. Ahhh. Nearly our whole office in Maputo flew up together to attend the AKF retreat in Pemba. There were 80 employees in attendance and we spent 3 days doing team building exercises. This meant 3 gloriously wasted days of various games, including sack races, volleyball and futebol (soccer) interspersed with various activities, which also resembled games. The retreat ended with everyone feeling happy, friendly and tired.
The first weekend was spent on the beach in front of Eliane and Lucas’ house. Eliane is the Entrepreneur Development Initiative Director (my new boss) and Lucas is the Communications Director. Me and many of my colleagues sunned, swam, ate, drank, and hung out all day long. I live across the street from Lili and Lucas, and across the street from the beach. Their house is like Cheers, the same friendly faces and everyone knows your name. There are always locals hanging out in front of the house on the beach and watching us. On Sundays, they play soccer on the beach in front of the house. Saturday afternoon, I introduced a group of kids to Frisbee and we spent about 3 hours throwing it around. They had never seen it before and were very excited to learn. Sunday morning when I was back at Lili’s, the kids asked me when we could play again. Cultivation of my ultimate frisbee team has begun.
Here, there is no option but to be with your friends all the time. You work all day together then spend every weekend together. Saturday morning I got out of bed and within half an hour 2 friends were over. Here, it is an open door policy and the door will open whether you want it to or not. Flexibility is a virtue here.

The first day settling into my new house, I met my new roommates; Biljana the Macedonian intern, the 2 bathroom cockroaches and the mini frog in the toilet. Biljana is the only roommate remaining at this point but I am sure someone or something else will move in soon enough. The bugs are everywhere, in my salad, in the vegetables, the bathroom, the veranda etc. You just have to get used to them. But the roaches I don’t know if I will ever get used to.
On Sunday we spent the afternoon cooking Mozambican dishes with a local restaurant owner, Dona Rema, who won a competition as the best cook in the country, and had a dinner party at Lili’s house. We seriously worked for our dinner; my fingernails are still yellow from the curry paste. We made about 8 different dishes with cassava, sweet potato, okra, chicken (that were killed and plucked in the back yard of course), coconut rice, curry, piri piri and local greens, and all delicious. Lucas is putting together a cookbook of Rema’s recipes, so he took pictures of everything before we ate it all. When I return to Canada I will make many of them for you all to try. It was such a nice weekend, spending so much time with the people I work with, it is really like a big family. Pemba brings people very close together, because without each other there really is nothing. There is the disco on the weekends and a handful of restaurants on the beach, and that’s it. There isn’t a cinema or video store for that matter. There really is only the beach and each other. Which is enough.
Pemba has a population of around 70,000 split into the city and the beach. The office is located in the city and many of us live on the beach which is about a 10 minute drive away, but out of the city proper. The AKF cars pick us up every day and take us home. It’s very isolated and underdeveloped. Our water at the house works only with a water pump that is run by a generator. Our clothes are washed by hand in the bathtub. Our stove is a propane hot plate that I am sure is slowly poisoning us. Power outages are common here and can last for days. Cost of living is very high. My rent is $500 USD and a box of corn flakes costs around $6-10. Did I mention the bugs everywhere? But when you walk across the street and swim in the clear blue ocean it really ceases to matter. Until you get stung by a jellyfish then it’s kind of annoying but only until the burning wears off and you continue cultivating that lovely caramel color. Pemba is the kind of place where you learn to live very simply.