Mozambique

I am very very very behind in my blog updates but its been a busy couple of weeks with leaving Indonesia and arriving in Mozambique. I arrive in Mozambique on Sunday, March 1st, and it was raining unfortunately when we arrived. We checked into the hotel and then headed out with a coworker from the area who showed us around Maputo and gave us the do's and don't's of Maputo. The rest of the week was pretty much getting adjusted to work and sorting out where things were in the city. For starters there is excellent seafood! I mean some of the best if not the best seafood I have ever had, so incredibly fresh it was unreal. I have pretty much eaten either shrimp, calamari, about 5-10 different varieties of fish while I have been here, yum.

Maputo is a fairly developed city and was not what I was expected when I came to Africa, luckily there are not many chains here (there is a KFC so far but I don't think much more). There is a decent catering to the expatriate community here, so there are alot of restaurants with a western feel and I was actually surprised at how many westerns there actually are in the city. The city itself is a bit rundown but nothing terrible, almost all the roads are paved however there are huge pot holes in about 75% of most of the paved roads, which means driving is usually done very slowly or in a 4 wheel drive car. They drive on the left side of the road like most of the other places in the world. Mozambique was colonized by the Portuguese and that is the official language of Mozambique and I would say about 50% of people living in Mozambique speak English as well (even though they all say they don't speak it very well which is a lie).

Maputo is pretty safe in terms of developing cities, but you just need to be smart about where you do and do not go. So there are a couple of streets which we can walk on during the day and night but we were told to stick to them for our own safety. The Mozambique people are pretty laid back and chill people who are not about to invoke conflict by any means.

Some general facts about Maputo, the other important one is that the internet is not very reliable at all! It pretty much goes and down on a constant basis which would explain why I have not updated my blog on a more regular basis. I will be writing more shortly about my first weekend here at the beach, fish market and wood crafts market, all good times!