Different

It's been about two weeks since we made our harrowing journey across the Tanzanian border into Mozambique, which means that this post is two weeks overdue. My excuse has been the lack of infrastructure in northern Mozambique and the chaos that has been our schedule (example: it took us three days to realize that Mozambique is an hour behind Tanzania). I guess it doesn't help that we stuck ourselves away in several of the beautiful little hard to get to nooks along the way.

The past few weeks have been for the most part quite fun and relaxing. I would say that for me the highlight has been the different type of characters that we have found ourselves in the company of. Northern Mozambique has a fraction of the tourist infrastructure found in the south or in Tanzania. Because of this you often find yourself clumping together with whatever other expats are in the area, many of whom are there for work rather than pleasure: Landmine clearing rigs, oil company contractors, tourist establishment proprietors and various hanger-ons. I've been surprised by the amount of ex-military types working up here. We've bumped into a few South Africans who were in the Apartheid-era South African military and who because of the clandestine operations in Mozambique and Angola are fluent in Portuguese. For them it was an easy decision to skip off here after South Africa's transition to a "rainbow nation" government. However, we've also met Kiwis, Australians, Brits, Lebanese, all of whom have served in some sort of capacity with some military. Not a few of them have seen time in either Iraq, Afghanistan, or both through some of the many companies contracted there by the US government and the UN. One Afrikaans assured me that the first place the American military went when they looked for dependable contractors was the demobilized South African paramilitary forces.

Despite having significantly different philosophies and ideologies, these guys have been extremely kind to us, paying for drinks, giving lifts, and passing on helpful advice. It's been nice to see that great differences in opinion about a lot of things doesn't have to stop people from being kind to one another.

We are currently in Maputo, which feels like the first "real" city I've yet been to since getting to Africa: Huge gridded avenues, skyscrapers, paved walkways, it has it all.