Tan or No Tan?

 

It may seem like an easy question to answer, but every year, before summer, I have to make up my mind. More than a question, opting for or against sunbathing is a dilemma for me.

 

My skin is white-white, like Andy’s, the only one in this particular group of divers with the same characteristic. It is kind of curious to observe how different can be the skin of people apparently with the same colour. Some are white-olive, some white-pink, some white-brownish, some white-reddish… I guess the same happens with people of all colors and origins.

 

Anyway, no matter how much tanned Andy and I are, we both end up with our original milk whiteness. Why bother then? That was what I had decided a while ago: avoiding sun exposure at all cost. Despite almost a decade in the shade, last year I had to deal with a very small skin cancer. Instead of being rewarded, somehow I felt it like an unfair punishment.

 

This year I rebelled against the rules. I decided to be pro. I do think that from time to time bodies need to be exfoliated by wind, sun, water and other elements a naked skin is usually exposed to. My decision for a tan was in part to speed up the healing process of my bruised knees after a bad fall and a desperate fight with a local pickpocket. In that matter I succeeded, as the bruises are now almost imperceptible. I had all the reasons in the world to feel particularly uncomfortable with bruises on my knees.

 

Now that I am all tanned, a truly African, and I still have left 2 or 3 months of sun, I am a bit curious of how long the tan is going to last. Maybe the day my glorious golden brown is completely gone, I’ll be asking myself the same question: “Tan or no tan?”

Four Weddings and a Big Question

 

If I am not mistaken, today is World Kiss Day. I guess this is a date few people are aware of, though I truly think it should be well known. Kissing is fun, enjoyable and one of the best ways of telling the immense variety of human feelings.

 

Besides, I also have other reason to celebrate the 28th: the wedding of someone very dear to me. Because of both reasons, I picked the date for another wedding. Actually from this day on I shall be concerned with four weddings… and hopefully with no funeral.

 

Maybe because it is wedding time, I also organized a honey-moon in Ponta do Ouro with most of the stuff I like: house on the beach where only Macua baths are possible (post of 2008-04-16), champagne, music, books, nice food, a warm blanket, goggles and snorkel… What else? A few things more, for sure.

 

What about the big question? I do have so many questions… Maybe the weather is the big question here. I expect, at least, a great deal of daring sun!

The Torture of Smell

 

Maybe because my eyesight is a little bit moody, I have most of my other senses very well developed. Some, like my smell, are painfully developed. I have a doggy nose. I detect smells and I am very particular with smells.

 

We brought some cheeses from Europe. Strong cheeses, if you know what I mean. (About this subject, I remember a girl who by the circumstances was forced to live on processed cheese for some time. She missed a “real cheese”, like she used to say, but she couldn’t remember a single type. One day she wanted so much a proper cheese that she started to ask: “Do you know where to buy a smelly cheese?”)

 

Well, we have smelly cheeses at home. One of them has an extreme smell. I had to take special precautions to avoid food contamination inside the fridge. As soon as I “jailed” it, I forgot about the guy.

 

Days ago I was entering the house when I identified a strange strong smell. It took me less than five minutes to discover a new object Paul had bought, made with smoked wood. For various reasons, local crafts have this smell. Maybe they stay near the fire and the smell rubs off on them.

 

I started explaining my problem to Paul. He knows I am sensitive to smells, so he should be careful before bringing things inside. Instead of being comprehensive, Paul started to say he couldn’t feel any smell at all.

 

We were near the entrance, politely, still persistently, discussing smell or no smell, unaware of Andy’s presence in the kitchen. Unexpectedly, he appeared tittering:

 

“Are you having problems with smell? I’ve got the solution!”

 

In his hands he had the opened container where I had so carefully buried that smelly cheese. Lets say Andy was right. For at least an hour, the only smell perceptible was that of cheese. A terrible foul smell!

Amantismo

 

Maybe only a handful of Mozambicans has ever heard of Doctor Zhivago. However, it seems that they suffer from Zhivago’s syndrome – here called amantismo. Amantismo comes from the Portuguese word amante, which means the same than the French word amant. Amantismo means the excessive practice of having lovers. Interesting, isn’t it?

 

How is that so? I don’t know. Is that for real? Yes, it is seriously real. In Mozambique, it’s very rare a man or a woman without a respective lover. What can explain the phenomenon? I don’t know. I can only guess.

 

I’ll talk about a case I fleetingly know. She is a Mozambican mature woman, with a job, a house, three children and two unsuccessful marriages in her past. For Mozambican standards, she is a lucky one. In reality, she is “trouble free”. She doesn’t expect a lot from men, except sharing a good time together.

 

He is a married man. He has a job, a house, a wife and 3 or 4 children. He is the provider, an exemplar Mozambican for supporting his family. Most of them don’t stay long in a marriage. However, as a truly good Mozambican, he finds married life to be pretty boring. Conversations are all about money, children, family matters… A man likes to play. Mozambican men like to play a lot.

 

He could have any “dezasseiszinha” (young girl with 16) he wanted, but they mean trouble. They are expensive. They ask too much. He has seen too many marriages of friends ruined because of “dezasseiszinhas”.

 

So he meets that mature woman. She doesn’t ask anything, except for a little of his time, a little of his attention… The deal is a win-win situation. It just works. In the case I know, it has been working for five years. She calls him her boyfriend. I don’t know what he calls her, but girlfriend would be appropriate. They spend together the time they can: twice a week, an occasional weekend and once a year a week or so of holidays somewhere in Mozambique.

 

I was alerted to amantismo by the local media. The practice was discussed as a threatening situation to families and society. The explanation? A mystery.

 

Actually, I have an explanation for this specific fooling around. As you so well know, the situation of Aids in Mozambique is problematic. A married man would sleep with night girls, usually during the weekends. Because of Aids, a wise married man can’t do it any more. So he finds a safe solution in amantismo. In other words, amantismo seems to be a risk free substitute for the local restless married men.

Doctor and Me

 

The first time I read Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago I was nine. I guess it was during my first holidays away from boarding-school. It was winter, good time for long books and home coziness. I remember how I sympathized with Tonya’s cause and despised Lara’s fate. For me, Tonya represented home, mother and all reassuring feelings I could understand. Though I was pro-Tonya, I couldn’t hate Lara entirely. I just saw her like an occasional obstacle, someone in the wrong place at the wrong time.

 

I was in my teens when I decided to read it again. I had a clear notion that the first time I had skipped pages, just following dialogues and interesting passages. No way I could have read all those description grey areas with nine!

 

Soon I learned that 4 or 5 years after my first reading, I wasn’t still very much into descriptions. On the contrary, I remember how I was even more interested in the plot and less in everything delaying it. To my own surprise, this once my favorite character was Lara. She personalized all my growing romanticism. Tonya was merely an obstacle to Lara and Zhivago’s happiness. I hated her, during the reading and for a very long time.

 

On read three, I was still dealing with the hate-Tonya and love-Lara equation. I was a lot more mature though. In reality, I understood that in my previous attempts I had been too centralized on the female universe. My hate or love for the characters came as a result of trying to identity myself with one of them. Which kind of woman would I like to be? How would I like to be loved?

 

But this time I was well aware of how strong Pasternak’s female characters were. They were different in so many things still so strong and so coherent on their paths. What importance if Tonya was the one who cared and Lara the one who mattered, when I was feeling that both were strong and right?

 

After that discovery, Zhivago has drawn my attention. Contrary to previous impressions, I felt sorry for him (though compassion is not my favorite ground). The poor sad guy was merely an observer, divided, undecided and bivalent – and not only about two women. While many can read Zhivago thinking of the macho art of juggling with two women, I reached the opposite conclusion: here is a man feeling miserable because 1) He is not a player on the events unfolding around him, he just goes with the flow. 2) He is a witness, but he doesn’t have the desire or strength to change the outcome of things around him. 3) Undecided about two women, he seems to feel pretty miserable. 4) Instead of making one of them happy, he manages to make the two of them somehow unsatisfied.

 

I can understand the male quest for happiness in a certain degree and at certain stage. There are phases in our lives when that quest is an imperative. But once found the Right One (and if you marry her it is because she is the one – otherwise better correct the mistake), why not invest in her exclusive happiness?

 

Up to this day, I have some reservations in what concerns Zhivago’s character. And that is also the geniality of the words, the way they draw you a picture of someone so close to reality. I do think that out there men like Zhivago exist, men with a Zhivago’s complex. They use a woman as an excuse to make another one unhappy. They use both women to avoid taking a decision.

 

In this world there are lots of women and men. It is said women outnumber men, an advantage point for men. Is it possible that quantity is still an equation in relationships terms?

 

The idea that a man can make more than a woman happy only exists in the head of some men. But lets not forget that the principle is also religious. I had a curious talk with a man with three wives. He tried very hard to convince me that the system worked. Giving him the benefit of a doubt, I heard him. And how he talked! At the end, I concluded that those women only accept the deal for need, obligation or both.

 

For me, such men believe in fairy tales. They believe that women don’t have needs, don’t have a say. They believe that men can perform miracles, when the reality shows the diametrical opposite. Miracles, only in their dreams.

 

Men like to think that they are and they can. Who doesn’t? It is an old art of women to let them think that they do. A little of imagination and fantasy don’t hurt anybody. The problem is that men’s imagination has the tendency to show… and show. And today I had to sayl it.

 

If a man can make a woman fairly happy, and he can feel that he does – if he wants to be attentive to that detail –, he can consider himself a very lucky one.

 

Portuguese language has a say: “Your eyes are too big for your belly size.” It is usually used with people who eat a lot or want too many things. In terms of relationships, some men are just like that. They have too big eyes for such small… (whatever).

 

During that last reading it stuck me how women are strong in their true selves. How Zhivago seem historically misplaced and incapable of deciding between the lover and the mother figures. He is a serious example of the dichotomy some men suffer: the woman-mother or the woman-lover? Is it that difficult to accept the one-woman concept? Beneath each Tonya lies a Lara. Beneath each Lara lies a Tonya. Sometimes, men underline which one they want her to be –and then regret the choice.

 

Most men think to be happy by numbers or by the illusion of making lots of women happy, be they wooers, boyfriends or husbands. It seems to me that in order to be happy all it takes is making another person happy. But that requires courage and a well-leveled ego.

 

Why can’t men make more than a woman happy? But they can! They can make them miserably happy.

 

Well, I don’t read Doctor Zhivago for a long time. I wonder how I would feel if I decided to give Zhivago another try?

A Book For Me

 

There is a bookshop in South Africa that Paul and I use to visit when we can. Paul sits for a cappuccino, while I travel through shelves and shelves of colorful titles.

 

As usually, before Christmas the offer is vast, so vast that five minutes after I was back with six books on my hands. Placing them in front of Paul, I suggested:

 

“Could you check how interesting these books are? There are so many new titles that I cannot pay attention to them all.”

 

Later, when I returned for tea, he handed to me the previous books, keeping just one of them.

 

“I want to give you this one as a present. It is the perfect book for you!” he revealed.

 

The book he was saving in his hand held the word Mozambique in its title, the reason I had selected it between others new arrivals. I thought it to be a political or social study of some kind, but it turned out to be a biography with other components interesting me.

 

“Why did you had to tell me that? You could buy it without me knowing!” I complained.

 

For me the main attraction of a gift is the surprise element. However, I was decided to be comprehensive.

 

“I accept. Now, as I know the content, at least you have to wrap it differently. You have to surprise me with that!” I negotiated.

 

A little less than a month later, Paul was shopping for the perfect wrap with me by his side.

 

“It’s not fair! What kind of present is this one?”

 

“I still have something left” he calmly released.

 

“What?” I asked with admiration.

 

“Words” he simply delivered.

 

That’s how I now own a new book belonging to my favorites ever, with Paul’s logic and concise handwritten dedicatory.

Walking the Neighbourhood

 

It has been ages since I last walked around my neighbourhood. I have to tell that there are schools nearby, so this place is a mix of quietness (during holidays) and bustle (active school periods). As summer holidays are long, it’s not that bad.

 

This is more or less what happened during my stroll: 1) The number of people on the streets has clearly increased, but they don’t live here. They don’t own places, they didn’t conquer this town, they just use it to make a living by selling bits and pieces of anything they can get their hands into, as it is in town that people with money stay. At the end of the day the buzz moves to the poor surrounding neighbourhoods, while a great peace invades the ill illuminated streets. 2) Lebanese who hardly can speak Portuguese own the majority of the shops. 3) Mozambican streets are good to meet people I know. I met an 85 years old lady who still manages her shop with the stamina of a young woman. I also met a 50 years old neighbour I haven’t seen for ages, who circled my face with her hands, called me “beautiful neighbour” and gave me two noisy kisses on my face. (Note: Walking neighbourhoods can do a lot for your self-esteem!) And finally, I met a 30 years old lady who cut my walk short by insisting in giving me a lift. In exchange, I had to offer my shoulder for her to cry over a lost love.

 

That lady is living one of the oldest dramas in the world: she is having an affair with a married man. She invested in a relationship and, after a couple of years, she is concluding that he is not going to leave his family for her. She is very confused because he keeps repeating she is the “light of his life”, at the same time reaffirming that he has no courage to leave his daughters. My advice to her was simply one: if he were supposed to do something about his unhappy marriage he would have done it a long ago, even before he had met her.

 

“Don’t fool yourself,” I told her. “Accepting a married man is accepting to be his mistress until he wishes. Or at least they think it’s that way until something changes those perfect arrangements. If you accept to be his mistress, just be – don’t fool yourself or present further complains.”

 

I told her about someone I met once. Let’s say I was so childish and adventurous as I am now. I acted a bit wildly and my behavior caught the eye of a married man with children. He thought he was in love and talked about it with his wife. I shall never forget her despair. Since then I decided never ever causing pain to any woman. At least I could maintain my word until today, and the contrary would kill me.

 

“There are enough good single people in this world” I told my tearful friend. “It’s just a question of timing and a little of patience before the Right One comes along.”

 

She drove off in her cute yellow jeep, leaving me with the hope of somehow having been coherent. I entered my house, now transformed in a bachelors’ hideout. Yes, it is truth! TD is temporarily separated from his girlfriend, having just started a Paris-London trip. Andy is bachelor again, while JP is wild and free!

 

“Better off alone than insecure and unhappy…” I thought before definitively closing my walk.

Muffin Dilemma

 

There is an old colonial custom still in use that I never followed: what the patrão (master) eats, the servant cannot eat. Today it’s almost the same, even in genuine Mozambican households. Over the master’s table you’ll find a kind of food; on the table of his domestic worker, a different one.

 

When I first came to Mozambique, I hardly tried to follow the local customs. I asked my home right hands what they wanted to eat. Basically, they told me they would be happy with cornmeal porridge and dried fish.

 

For a week or so I was giving them the money to buy and cook their own food. You cannot imagine the smell of the curry they were preparing using dried fish! Soon, I started to feel sick with it. That dreadful smell was invading everything. Urgent action was required.

 

“Do you like the kind of food that we eat?” I dodged.

 

Chef Mario and nanny Fina reacted with their usual awkward smile, a mix of shyness and expectation.

 

“Would you mind to eat the same food we have?” I repeated.

 

Like in a forceps birth, the answer was difficult to get.

 

“We can eat anything, senhora.”

 

I explained to both that I couldn’t see a reason why they should cook two different types of food. It was set. I got rid of the smell and the flies. They got an improved diet. I truly think they have enough of dried fish at home.

 

Feeding two to four more people everyday is a little bit expensive, but not impossible. Sometimes I have the notion that it sounds strange to feed so many with imported meat and other delicacies impossible to find locally. But the system has proven to work for us.

 

My family knows that at home we all eat the same. Though, outsiders react from time to time.

 

Months ago I had to explain why I was feeding my maid with English muffins, while I could buy another kind of bread for her. I understand the remark because that bread travels from Cape Town to our table and, as you may guess, it’s not cheap at all. To be sincere, during that short period I was buying the same bread for the maid just because I was too lazy to discover a different type of bread, not so expensive.

 

Anyway, when that someone questioned why I was feeding my maid with English muffins, I simply answered: “Why not?”

 

Macua Bath

 

In the middle of one of my tae bo lessons, I noticed my teacher’s approval look towards my punching efforts. It took me months to realize that punching is not only about arms. It involves the whole body. I guess this learning process started to show through in the way I move, and above all in the strength of my attacking arm, because the look on her face was of pride and appreciation.

 

Such look is just the kind we may read sometimes in a lover’s eyes. Unfortunately, that type of message is very rare and when it happens we aren’t usually attentive or trained to recognize it. Though I assure you that the eyes language is the only one we can really trust. Once you have learned it, you will know what I am talking about. Those quiet messages make a strong impact on people highly sensitive to that form of language, as I am.

 

The result of the spontaneous approval look of my teacher was an extremely hard working student. I punched, I hopped and I kicked like never before.

 

The class was particularly strenuous. We know it when the teacher stops 15 minutes before the due time for a yoga cool down. While I was lying on my thin blue gym mat, teacher approached a knockdown Seabell and put her hand on the back of my neck, correcting my stretching position. Only at that moment I realized how soaked in sweat I was. Thus, instead of relaxing, my mind started to repeat a Math’s equation: hot boiler out of order = cold bath.

 

Once at home, Paul instantaneously confirmed my fears:

 

“We’ll have a new boiler tomorrow. After a short discussion, Italian plumber-electrician and I have decided it is time for a replacement.”

 

“Well…” I sighed with resignation. “I am up for a cold shower.”

 

“No, you are not. I’m preparing you a Macua bath!” And a concerned and resourceful Paul started to prepare my bath.

 

Macua is the largest group in Mozambique and also the word for the language they speak, which, by the way, my father speaks fluently too.

 

Last year, while on Ilha, Paul noticed an odd aspect: most of the houses don’t have toilet facilities, and this includes the impressive reddish palace. Even in the hotel were we stayed, toilets are a clear improvisation. The only decent bathroom we were able to see on Ilha was that one in the ruins where I once lived, with its clever black and white floor, and huge white bathtub, still the way I’ve always remembered it.

 

If people don’t have such important commodity, you may wonder how on earth do they do it? I am not revealing all here, but I can explain how they bath.

 

As far as I remember, the Macua bath can be very sensual. Picture a woman at sunset, when the heat of the day gets quiet, in the privacy of her small backyard. A shy drape covers part of her body. She stands beside a large container filled with tepid water. Standing above her, a friend or a lover scoops the warm precious liquid and slowly pours it over her head.

 

Without expensive bath milks or colorful bubbles, she rubs her shinning dark body with the soap molded by her right hand, melting under the pressure of her long fingers. Luminous rivulets on her skin wash out sweat and earth, wash out secrets and mysteries. Waves of silk. The soap dancing round dreams and stars. Spices and tears. Incurable wounds. The scooped rainfall. Winds on naked skin. Petrifying reality.

 

The day seems to crumble at her feet into promises for the night. The whiteness of her smile provoking the laugher of the falling water. A sculpture against the orange sky. Palm tree on soft ground, standing until the last drop falls through strings of her hair, dark as the approaching shadow, down her proud body to her gazelle’s legs. The flame of the day and the last drop of her bath at her delicate bare feet, planted on the same ground.

 

What about a Macua bath for yourself?

Second Lives

 

It was just one of those annoying domestic nuisances. Our old bath boiler wasn’t working properly and we, suddenly aware of the impressive cylindrical object, realized that it had been unstoppably working for more than a decade without a single complain. And how it had reasons to complain!

 

Calling the technician is not an easy task round here. After a few unsuccessful tries, someone gave us a number. Help arrived less than one hour later in the form of a blue-eyed middle aged Italian. Where on earth are the Mozambicans plumbers? We can only rely on European know-how even for that?

 

Before I could start guessing what he was up to in this side of the planet, I was “forced” to hear a phone call full of the word “amore”, ergo concluding that he was just another “second life” kind of guy.

 

The “second lives”, as I call them, have more than 40 and less than 70, they came from different backgrounds and most of the ones I know are European. They abandon a former unfulfilling personal life and a disappointing society, eventually after facing some kind of failure, and seek refuge in Mozambique.

 

They arrive with a few savings and soon discover how easy is to form a brand new family in this part of the world. The availability of women is enormous in Mozambique. They are very young, very clever in certain aspects and very submissive. They demand very little in exchange for their company. In a society where women are the main providers, finding a man who pays the bills is a truly jackpot.

 

I met my first “second life” long ago. He is a special man. He was powerful in Europe until the day a business of his went bankrupt. Instead of facing his family and his partners, he just flew to Mozambique. This is one exceptional, intelligent, well-informed and well-connected man. When he came to Mozambique he was the same 60 years fellow I knew from previous contacts. A few months later he was already involved with a 16 years girl with whom he had a little mulatto son. Later on he got involved in a court fight over properties and son. He got the son, but lost all he had. That’s how he came to work for us. Over the years that first romance multiplied. I don’t know how many children he has by now. The last time I heard from him he was paying the bills of a twenty-something student, a girl described to me as voracious.

 

The second case I could observe closely was of a man who came to Mozambique to check business opportunities. He was sent to us as an interesting investing partner. Among other things, he owned a well-succeeded construction company. He was a short, gentle and smart looking man on his fifties. We talked with him and we even had a dinner together before he disappeared from our sight. We assumed he had returned to Europe and simply forget about him.

 

Three months after our first contacts with him, we received a phone call from someone who identified himself as his son and begged for any information about his father’s whereabouts. Unfortunately we couldn’t help him, we answered. Over the phone, he disclosed that his family was worried sick and that he was coming for him.

 

We met the young man on arrival. We couldn’t help him a lot, but we asked to keep us informed. Two weeks later he reappeared almost in tears. He explained to us that he had to send for his brothers and sisters to help him removing their father from the place where he was finally discovered.

 

The elegant, soft-spoken business traveler was living in a hut, feeding and sleeping on a straw mat he shared with a very young “African wife”. The major shock for his grown-up son was the rope he was wearing instead of a belt. It crossed our mind that he could be mentally affected, but it seemed not to be the case. Later, we were informed that he had been robbed and consequently helped by the young woman where he insisted in staying.

 

Let me tell you that he is now back in Europe, but “conversations” to remove him from Mozambique were long, delicate and suffered from both sides of the table.

 

I know people very judgmental about men who suddenly decide to create a new life for themselves. I can’t deny that the critics might be right. However, I can understand the right of building a second life for one self. A second life is a fantastic theme, a theme to sail the unknown. Am I going to live a second life too? How many lives have I lived thus far? Or is this the same life and I couldn’t realize it before?