Mozambique Photos

I tried to post these the other day, but the internet wasn't working. But I got stuck in Mbabane, so I have another shot at the internet now! So here you go - photos of my AWESOME trip to Inhaka Island!

When we ordered coffee at the only open restaurant on the island, this is what we got...

This is what I picked our for dinner on our second night there. So tasty all grilled up! We ate family-style with a ton of the local people at the place we stayed!

Drinking the water out of a coconut FRESH off the tree!

Too much fun!
Harry was a spear fisher. He could hold his breath up to 4 minutes and dive 17 meters! 

Melanie, Kim, and I enjoying every second of vacation!

Making dinner with Jeffrey

Girls being girls
Melanie and I (and Kim in the shadows)

Low Tide

A little place I like to call Paradise!

Holy MOZes!

        I took my first African vacation a couple weeks ago with my volunteer buddies, Melanie and Kim. We went to a small island in Mozambique called Inhaka. Oh. My. Gosh. It was... amazing. We spent one night in Maputo (sorry, Dad, I know Maputo was the only place in the entire Subsaharan I wasn’t supposed to go... but it was only one night! And the whole city was really dirty and smelly, so I have no desire to go back... if that makes you feel any better) before we caught a ferry over to the island. We stayed at this really neat little back-packers called Cool Runnings. The whole thing was outdoors except the beds - very neat. We became great friends with the people running the place, and this good-lookin’ fella’, Jeffrey, ended up cooking us dinner every night - whatever catch-of-the-day we picked out (for free - they literally fed us for free the entire week - wouldn’t take money for it... they lost a LOT of money on us I am afraid). I had a great chat with this guy, Rob, on the ferry to the island, and he and his son, Natalio, wound up staying at Cool Runnings with our gang instead of the only actual resort on the island where they’d had reservations. We all had too much fun. WAY too much. During the days we all relaxed on the white beaches, hiked around the island, snorkeled, swam in the Indian Ocean, hiked up to this really cool light house, hung out with local kids, and just relaxed. It. Was. Fantastic. At nights we got wild and went down to the beach to star gaze and to the pier to watch the fish swarming around in the street lights on the dock. The Cool Runnings gang brought Melanie, Kim, and me to the pier the morning we left. Lots of hugs and long good-byes. It is CRAZY how fast you can grow so close to people! To say it was hard to leave Inhaka with its fresh coconuts strait off the tree, mangos, monkey-fruit, fresh fish, the water, sand, and ocean breeze would be a vast understatement. The ferry wasn’t running the day we left, so we had to hitch a ride on a small cargo sailboat. It was pretty awesome. The whole hull was full of fish, and 20 people crammed onto the deck, all huddled together, sitting in the sun under a sail of odd scraps of fabric stitched together hung on a tree-trunk-mast (literally the mast was the trunk of a gum tree with the branches cut off). It was a pretty sweet experience.
         Now it’s back to the grind-stone. Melanie came for a couple days to help me make library cards for all of the books in the school library - what a help that was! School starts on the 22nd, and I am in no way ready. But I wouldn’t trade that vacation for all the preparation in the world!
        Thanks for keeping up with me!!

House Guests

         I have been pretty lucky with uninvited guests so far in my first six months here in Swaziland. At my first homestead during training, I had an extremely tall termite mound between my pillow and the wall; that was pretty gross. And my second day at my permanent homestead here I had that horrible ant infestation. Other than that I’ve been quite pleased that I’ve only had a few small bugs, spiders and lizards here and there. But the winds are changing, apparently. I was opening my door the other night to bring Gogo some tea, and a snake slithered right into my hut! It was solid black and shiny. An incredible amount of screaming ensued (much to my surprise - I am not much of a screamer. In fairness, I only screamed when I was whapping and throwing things at it and it would come toward me instead of the door). It of course went strait to the storage corner of my hut where I could not see where it was hiding, making my task 100x’s more scary and potentially dangerous. But I finally got it out, and was able to breathe again. Then, not 18 hours later, I walked into my hut from a brief latrine visit and was dive-bombed by a bat! This guy wasn’t just hanging around or flapping for fun, he legitimately took two big dives at me! I thought bats were nocturnal- it was 12:30 in the afternoon when this guy came at me! He then flew strait for the door, but fell victim to the screen door I made of old mosquito netting. I went to open it to shoo him out, but saw I had already latched it with a pad lock. I moved frantically to the bed to grab my keys, unsure of how I would navigate my way to the lock with a (what I assumed to be rabid since it was out in the daytime) slightly dazed bat between the lock and I. Thankfully, as I turned around, it flopped/crawled its way through the small gap between the door and the floor. Phew!


         Now comes your part. I need advice. After the snake incident, I was coming up with plans for how to close the 1-inch gap between the screen door and floor to keep snakes and creatures from coming IN, but now I am thinking, perhaps it is a necessary gap to let OUT the creatures that find their way in... I do have a wooden door with only a 1/4inch gap that is closed at night and when I am away, so there is not always a big gap there. Oh my gosh. If both of these animals have come in while I am here... how many snakes and bats and... scorpions have come in while I'm away... and are already hiding under my wardrobe?! AHH!

         Update: The bat let his friends, family, and his in-laws know that I let him fly around and leave unharmed. He brought the whole gang over for a party last night (Dec 29th) within 30 seconds of me turning off my lights and music. I took a deep breath and reminded myself that they do not want to have any confrontation with me any more than I do them... despite the fact that they appeared to be dive-bombing me. So, I closed my eyes and told myself that they would stop flying around and probably leave soon.Then one literally slapped me in the face with its wing. This is where Katie snapped. “Are you kidding me you little...” much yelling proceeded and I hurriedly cranked my music and ran for the light. A tiny tornado of hairy wings quickly dispersed to the darker corners of the ceiling. I jumped to the box under my bed and extracted the mosquito net I had deemed claustrophobic when the Peace Corps gave it to me and got strait to work with string and knives to hang it from the wooden beams over my bed. After tucking the edges of the net tightly under my mattress (sealing myself in) I turned off the music (the light would stay on all night), and was promptly greeted by two bats swooping and smashing repeatedly into my net. One, tired of the struggle, stopped, clinging to the net just above my head. I flicked him into the wall. This morning when I woke, a dead bat was laying outside just by my doorstep, already being devoured by ants. I hoped he had time to warn his comrades that my hut was a dangerous place before he met his mysterious end. Then later on I saw his little friend was still hanging out on the wall by the rafters. I went to the firewood pile and selected a long, strong piece of Jacaranda. When I came inside, I looked at this furry little beast and contemplated for some time his demise. He was actually very cute and peaceful sleeping up there. Could we coexist? I mean, the bat has every right to be here as I do... but then, I am the one letting his family stay rent free in my walls, and he is the one throwing parties above my bed and slapping me in the face and screaming in my walls at all hours and pooping in my... WHACK.

I did put both bats in the bushes across the homestead together. I figured that was at least fair. Please pray that the snake does not do the same thing. I will not fare quite as well with a snake house-party.