Time to Stop

 

Knowing that I was writing on the internet, a German friend I met on “my island” told me: “Don’t do that to yourself!” I do understand the reason of his words. As someone concerned, he was trying to protect me.

 

Just like in “real life”, here you can find good and bad people. I’ve found both. With a bit of luck and wisdom, you can stick with the good and avoid the bad. The most important thing I learned is that behind apparently inoffensive blogs, there are authentic traps. Some people act “disguised”, and that is very wrong and very dangerous.

 

I’ve been writing for a reason. As that reason is no more, I feel like stopping. Maybe I will return one day, if I have extraordinary reasons to return. Maybe I will return to my regular posts, if conditions are favorable. I wrote positive and negative aspects about this country. At present there are people talking of a “zimbabwezation” of Mozambique. In fact, the official position regarding the security companies is, at least, worrying. According to a recently approved legislation, they are said to be strategic, and because of that they have to belong to Mozambicans.

 

On the other hand, the recent statement that there are obstacles for the realization of the scheduled elections it’s just another aspect of the same problem. Translated into French, that problem can be read as “L’état c’est moi!” The situation brings back memories of the past. I just can’t guess what the future of this country is going to be. For now, “divers” and I sit and wait like spectators of a replay movie. Having all the above in mind, I close my case with the sign: “Gone Fishing”.

Calamities Fashion

 

This forgotten land can be very poor and far from the big capitals of fashion, nonetheless you would be surprised to find the last trends everywhere.

 

I never was the kind to “follow”, and I still marvel when I look at pictures and recognize clothes designed by me or even done by me. That was before I discovered the prêt-à-porter, got lazy and forgot to be creative. Nowadays I buy safe labels in great quantities from 5 to 5 years, playing with them for quite sometime. In between I only buy if I like very much some particular item.

 

I taught my daughter and sons to be simple and casual in the way they dress. I married a “diver” very, but very, disinterested about this matter. However, from time to time, we have “fashion slaves” among us. For instance, I remember TD during his teens… Now it’s JP’s turn. It’s fun to see how he cares about his image, when I know that he is a carbon copy of his father in terms of fashion. The question is that he has money to spend and he is following the example of his fashion aware friend Jo.

 

In general terms, Mozambicans are far from the “naked” situation verified during the 80’s. People dress properly and seem to be able to take a part of their meager wages to dress. The ones who have enough money can buy the expensive items available in local fashion shops or travel to buy them somewhere else, mainly in South Africa. For the majority of people, second hand clothing is doing the difference. If it weren’t for it, the quality of living would be far worst.

 

I never went to a second hand shop, not because I would feel bad wearing a second hand garment, but because of hygiene and lack of patience to find a “jewel” in the middle of the hay. Sometimes I am surprised with the kind of people wearing second hand clothing, like when I was dinning out some time ago and the daughter of an ambassador appeared with a lavishing Lacroix top, “proclaiming” to have found it in the “calamidades”. Second hand clothing is called “calamities” here, because most of it arrives when some calamity strikes the country. It took her 2 or 3 hours to find that preciosity!

 

Anyway, the main reason to write about this particular subject is remembering that the clothes you don’t want and give to charity can dress an entire country… or an UN ambassador’s daughter!

What I’ll Be Doing Next Summer

 

We have been doing plans for summer, as usual. There is nothing spectacular scheduled, however I suspect that we will have a nice quiet summer with a few required surprises.

 

First of all, I have 2 months of tae bo and tango followed by 2 months of stop, before returning to the classes again. Tango is proving to be a very social kind of dance, including an open dance saloon and enjoying cheese and wine from time to time. (Damn wine allergy!) During our last class, our exceptional teacher described tango as “making love”, as a “sensation in the spine”.

“When you feel tango like making love, and other people look at you and feel the same, you have it! You are dancing tango…”

Serious matter, this one! It leaves us wondering…

While I am tae boing, I convinced Paul to exercise a little in the same gym. It is good for him. I also convinced him to go now and then for a yoga class with me. We will keep walking, or running, at Miradouro, where I also meet Katherine, the security personnel, guitar players, my new friend Max and others… That’s our active summer!

In terms of work, it looks like a couple of ideas can go through during the next months. Mainly, we still sit and wait for three “treasures” we feel like ours. We shall see!

It is much easier to plan fun around here. There are no dates, yet, but more or less in this order we plan to go to: Marracuene for our “summer toast”; Xai-Xai for mussels and calamari; Ponta do Ouro for diving; Richards Bay to visit JP; Bilene for driving around the lagoon; Inhambane for its fabulous beaches; Durban for Christmas shopping; Graskop to escape from hot January; Johannesburg to stay a while with TD; Zinkwazi for relaxation…

I’ll be busy next summer. I just wonder if I’ll survive it…

The Care of the Poor

 

Slowly I am starting to feel myself again. I miss my real me, if I am allowed to express myself this way.

 

Yesterday Paul showed his concern about the local weather (a good sign when his concern is no longer me…):

 

“September should be windy, not rainy and grey as it is now! And it is going to be like this for another week…” he said.

 

With that information in hand, I decided to dress myself for the rest of the week with happy colors, my humble contribution to give a little of zest to the world!

 

One thing is for sure, because of the dreadful combination weather-work, my daily routine changed a lot. For instance, I stopped walking and running on Miradouro. It has been like 5 days without going out with Paul. Sunday afternoon I saw Paul arriving with a puzzled smile all over his face.

 

“What?” I asked.

 

“Do you believe that the group of security personnel (guards from a private company) addressed to me while I was walking? For the first time in almost a year of walking in the same place, they stopped me and asked ‘where is senhora?’ They showed a truly curiosity about your absence!”

 

Paul was surprised and so am I. During months I crossed the places where they work without saying a word or at least looking at them! I am feeling like someone who has just learned a precious lesson. Besides caring, I can walk safely on two streets of this town just because they are there… They are a truly example of what being Mozambican is all about: good hearts caught inside tragic circumstances. I shall never ignore them from now on! They have just earned a special supper. I am not the kind to forget someone else’s care.

Sleep Working

 

I don’t know if this is going to reach someone who can help me or if I should simply contact a specialist. I “sleep work” and I would like to know if that is dangerous. (This is starting to sound like a letter addressed to a magazine column…)

 

I was aware of the situation when I was working as co-editor of a newspaper. Sometimes I was reading and writing from 2pm until 4am, with small stops along the way. There was a particularly difficult journalist I has to re-write. His writing started to put me on a strange “trance”: my body was asleep; my heart was beating at a very slow rate, almost stopped; all this while I was fully concentrated on my job. The first time I noticed I had been sleep working, I was completely astonished with the perfection of the write. The end result was perfect!

 

I also can add to the above description: 1) It usually lasts between 1 and 2 hours. 2) I avoid this experience because I am afraid of it. 3) Coming out it’s not easy as it provokes a painful heartbeat. 4) I am not sure if it starts and ends voluntary, involuntary or both. 5) It’s more frequent if I am doing a routine work, like reading an existing text, although I’ve experienced creating while sleeping. 6) It all starts with a different way of breathing. It ends with that pain in the heart. 7) I avoid falling into what I call “sleep working” by watching a little of a movie, listening to music, or even sleeping a few minutes, between regular periods of work. I was never awaken by someone, but I do wonder what my reaction would be. 9) It usually happens after hours of work, when I am clearly tired, but it can also happen early if I previously know (or quickly feel) that the job is not interesting or creative. 10) After these periods, I resume what I was doing or go to bed, feeling usually a bit strange: not tired and not rested. I would say in between.

 

I am not looking for transcendental explanations, but a reasonable one. Somehow I believe that my “sleep working” has a lot to do with my old sleep walking crises. Well, what I really would like to know, and that is going to put me some day talking with a specialist, is: how common and how dangerous is?

 

I feel like a lot of people can relate with this matter, if not due to “sleep working” at least because of sleeping during work!!!

Large Amounts of Ingenuity!

 

One may think that only women fall for internet traps, but now and then we are confronted with the fact that men can be as ingenuous and fragile as women are.

 

Just hear this: some time ago an Australian citizen went to Mali after a period of correspondence with a Mali woman. He had “strong reasons” to do like so: 1) He was in love with her. 2) He was informed that the bride represented a dowry of $100.000 in gold.

 

At the airport, instead of a woman, two men were waiting for him. Soon he was assaulted, robbed and kept captive for 12 days. How ingenuous people can be!

 

I have some doubts about this story because in Africa the man pays the dowry and not the contrary. It could make more sense if he was told to carry that amount with him to pay for the bride, a guarantee that the scam would be monetary successful.

 

If you want to read a little more about the same subject, you can do it here.

Get a Life!

 

I have some reactions to explicit sex contents. I believe that, as it happens with the majority, I’m a little curious but I run from that kind of situations and most of the times I feel simply disturbed. Is it only me?

 

I wasn’t aware of my attitude towards showing off, but after almost two years using the net I was forced to discover that side of me. I had to face various situations. They left me a bit anxious and scared. Usually I like to “catalogue” people, and right now I am surprised with the quantity of them using the net as a cover to airy predator tendencies.

 

I’ve been very careful lately, nonetheless, I had to face a couple of situations proving that even if you behave, in the internet you never are completely safe. The last one happened while using the skype. If you do a mistake, there you have your predator. And to make things even worst, there are the ones acting mischievously thinking (hilariously!) that they are different from the common predator.

 

Someone I know was quite surprised with the sexual nature of a “place” where she opened a blog. She even suspects that behind many existing blogs there are florescent businesses not very far from the old pimp-prostitute thing. If a nice face/body shows, immediately there is a fair chance of being contacted to move to somewhere else where “profits” are going to be split between. The question is that those girls are soliciting attention (money) just like any prostitute.

 

When I have reactions of this nature, I try to understand what is behind them. Am I some kind of puritan? No, I am not because… So why do I react negatively to sexual material, especially when “imposed”? I’ve been wondering what I really feel when facing images or texts about someone else’s sexual experiences. I discovered that I don’t feel shocked at all. My first minute is curious, my second minute is analytical and all further minutes are of pure boredom.

 

First of all, how can people exposed to porno or erotic contents reach self satisfaction and pleasure, if they are constantly facing someone apparently doing it better, showing it better, enjoying it better…? Dispersion is what I see and, along with it, a great deal of incapacity of focusing on fundamental options, real emotions, etc. I can understand a certain degree of it when searching for someone, but what I have concluded is that the majority is just searching for themselves.

 

Thankfully, I think that I am too interested in “my own life” to care about other’s exhibitionism. If life was a theater, it sure had to offer other seats and roles besides for voyeurs and exhibitionists. At least, I would like to seat on a place for “simply living their lives”, the better or the worse they can. Call it egoism, and I would say it is an egoism I am untitled to. If it was for me, paparazzi and sex businesses would go bankrupt. But I also know that they survive because out there exists a favorable market since the beginning of times. The only thing new with the net it’s how close from us they are and how easy it is for them to reach any of us.

 

I was 9 when I read for the first time Dostoievsky’s White Nights. Since then I can count with my fingers the number of relationships interesting me, either in real life, movies or literature… During all this time, I’ve been doing my best to be the main character of my own life story!

Morning Highlights-7

 

“Doctor Paul”
Instead of a treasure hunter and other things, Paul could as well be a doctor. No one can talk about health issues near him without having back his full enthusiasm. He knows all the illnesses, and the cure for them. He reads the subject and loves any conversation about it. You just start? He is there! Seabell runs away from “doc Paul” sapience, like a cat runs from the water.

 

(By the way, Seabell doesn’t like very much the above comparison, because she has seen a cat diving for food. Since then she is not sure of the accuracy of such sentence. That cat was a professional diver. At that time, Seabell’s father owned a hunting farm called Fonte Santa (Holy Fountain), in the middle of Alentejo. Sometimes Seabell and sister accompanied him through the blazing hills, always begging for the rabbits, the hares and the partridges lives. There was a nice river crossing the property right on the middle, where they had lots of fun with a raft. Well, it was in that place that Seabell met the cat. She still remembers how skilled he was. Does Seabell’s sister remember that cat too?)

 

About Paul’s doctor like behavior, Seabell has to confess that from time to time he prescribes good medicine. Aware of Seabell’s sleeping difficulties, he recently opened the curtains saying:

 

“I know what you have to do…”

 

Seabell panicked expecting the name of a pill, a tea or other kind of miraculous potion. Can you believe that he completed his idea with:

 

“You are used to a lot of exercise. I do have to admit that you must return to tae bo classes, and whatever you feel like doing!”

 

Isn’t he right for this once!?!?!?

Where Are They?

 

It has been a while I don’t tell you about “my divers”. Some are around, worried with their own lives: Paul, Andy, Vic… Occasionally, we met today Vic: energetic, still battling between Laws and the gym where he teaches. Andy has just arrived from a short travel to Durban, while TD is lucky to be playing in Paris with his South African band, precisely when the South Africa is on the final of the RWC. Someone in France had to know it beforehand!

 

Recently we received news about the other divers. Jo is coming soon to get ready for a season in Qatar, until the end of the year. For now he is still in Richards Bay working side by side with JP, as usual. NB is traveling soon to Durban. We believe JP is going to join him there and possibly travel from Durban to Gulf of Mexico, where they usually stay during a period of two months. As you can see, the boys are busy!

______________

 

Já há algum tempo que eu não falo acerca dos “meus mergulhadores”. Alguns andam por aqui, ocupados com os seus afazeres: o Paul, o Andy, o Vic… Hoje escontrámos por acaso o Vic: cheio de energis, sempre a batalhar entre Direito e o ginásio onde ensina. O Andy acabou de chegar de uma curta viagem a Durban, enquanto o TD tem a sorte de estar a tocar em Paris integrado na sua banda sul-africana, precisamente quando a África do Sul está na final da RWC. Alguém em França desconfiava já disso!

 

Recebemos recentemente notícias sobre os outros mergulhadores. O Jo deve estar a vir até cá para se preparar para um período no Qatar, antes do fim-do-ano. Por enquanto ele ainda está em Richards Bay, trabalhando lado a lado com o JP, como é habitual. O NB vai viajar proximamente para Durban. Acreditamos que o JP se vai juntar lá a ele e talvez viajar de Durban para o Golfo do México, onde eles usualmente ficam por um período de dois meses. Como podem ver, os rapazes estão ocupados!

On Icebergs and Birthdays

 

The day I wrote these lines
Icebergs were seen very near
Misplaced on warm blue waters
Floating the southern hemisphere

 

A drop that’s all it takes
A step we dance in a round
Sadness mimics crystal laugh
Silence becomes cheer sound

 

Outside has been windy and grey
But this thirteenth of October
It’s also your happy birthday

 

Lost icebergs of a different kind
Drops of love, you and I are
Drops of life – drops of time.

A happy day, sister!