Presidential Visit to Chitengo

Mozambican President Armando Guebuza visited Gorongosa National Park last month -- the first presidential visit to the Park in decades. This visit produced a flurry of activity for the weeks leading up to the visit, with pre-visits by various dignitaries (presidential assistants, local government officials, security teams), massive work to decorate and landscape the new cabanas, painting of buildings throughout the site, repair of roads still pot-holed by the summer rains... A lot of things got done with the pressure of this important visit! But this work didn't come without plentiful stress shared around the camp.

My job was to help prepare the costumes for our group kids who were to dance and sing for the President. We spent weeks bent over sewing machines, weilding needles, making and painting maracas, and rehearsing the kids. Happily the songs and dances they were to perform were well-known Mozambican songs, so at least we didn't have to start from scratch there!

When the Big Day arrived, hundreds of people descended upon Chitengo, all requiring accommodation of some kind. The chalets were reserved for dignitaries, and tents popped up all over camp to house the masses for one or two nights. I'm still not quite sure who everyone was and why they needed to be here for the visit. Some were ministers from the government, others were local politicians (provincial and district goverment officials).

And then came the aircraft. Five helicopters and one cargo plane. What a ruckus. All very formal. People poured out to watch the arrival, although the "official" welcoming group was kept quite small. However, Rich made the cut and got to shake hands with the President!

The President and his entourage marched at a quick pace through the camp, pausing for about 15 seconds in front of our group of performing kids, long enough to wave an appreciative hello. The excitement was palpable. In fact, the women's performng group continued to dance and sing long after the President disappeared into his cabana, enjoying the moment of revelry with dozens of other onlookers.

Ian Beilfuss, Helicopter Boy

Greg Carr was in Chitengo for the past couple of weeks, affording us the opportunity to see more of the Park by helicopter! Greg always arrives here by helicopter, and keeps it here during his stay in order that he can get around the Park and the region for his work.
Happily, he also invites others to use the helicopter to accomplish goals, whether they be looking for the lone small herd of zebra in this vast park, conducting anti-poaching raids, escorting important visitors, or checking out the status of cutting and burning on the Mountain.
We were the lucky beneficiares of Greg's generosity last week, making two family helicopter flights, one to look for the zebra (didn't find them, alas), and one to visit the top of Gorongosa Mountain.

Ian is a terrific flyer, whether facing forwards or backwards in the 7-seater helicopter, and is often even the spotter of wildlife. We saw crocodiles, hippo, tons of waterbuck, sable, elephant, warthogs, and many other kinds of animals during our trip round the Park in the helicopter.
Alas even flying on a helicopter becomes old hat for this small boy after a short time. Ian snoozed on the return trip home...

Our Local Lawnmowers

We sat this evening with the lights of our house and porch turned off so that we could watch the activity of our local lawnmowing squad: the neighborhood warthogs.

Tonight we had seven warthogs, some adult, some young, chomping on the grass outside our house. Sometimes they prefer the grass by the pool, or behind the visitors' reception. Mostly they don't mind people much, unless you come too close. You can tell if they are comfortable with your presence by their stance: when they are relaxed, they lower themselves onto their frong "knees" like the warthog in this picture so that their mouths are at ground height, making grass chomping easier. Once they get spooked, they come up on all fours ready to run, and eye you warily.

I love their little tails that tend to stick straight up in the air when they run.

"Loja do Chitengo"

Here is the team for "Loja do Chitengo" -- the Chitengo Gift Shop (l to r): Mane (head carpenter) , Maneca (assistant), Jose Carlos (or Zeca for short), and Sophia. Mane, Maneca, and Zeca have built all the shelving for the shop as well as secure storage trunks and cabinets for keeping the shop wares, and a wall to screen ff the area behind the shop, all out of locally-available bamboo. They work hard, they are friendly, and, most importantly, they put up with my Portuguese! We now have added a woman, Maria, to the team, and hope to train her to assist Natasha with the children's activities as well.

Chitengo School

Natasha has founded Chitengo's first school! At the moment it is purposefully small - only 4-6 students, all beween the ages of 3 and 6. We have supplied the school with a variety of materials including children's books in Portuguese, fingerpuppets, a small kitchen with plastic plates and utensils, and wooden food (Mom, remember these?), and a variety of musical instruments. Sophia and Natasha brought a lot of things from Portugal as well - plasticine clay, paints, colored pencils, and other games. These kids haven't yet had any school here, and are delighted by everything they are exposed to. I bought a chalkboard along the road in Chimoio last week so now Natasha is working with the kids on reading and writing letters and numbers, and even a little bit of math. The local kids are due to be moved to their new housing situation soon, and we're not sure what will become of the school when this happens. Natasha is planning on offering her services for visiting tourists as well, or for any of the kids of staff who are living in Chitengo. Ian is very happy to have friends and playmates, and as the school is all in Portuguese, he is forced to listen and try to understand, and maybe he will start speaking some of the Portuguese that we know has managed its way into his brain...

Ian the swimmer

Swimming daily, or even twice daily, in the pool here at Chitengo has turned Ian into a real swimmer. We came with a "noodle" - one of those long noodle-shaped floaty things that helps keep a kid above water, and soon he was jumping off the side of the pool with impunity. Natasha showed him the breast stroke with his arms, and suddenly he wanted to swim all alone - no noodle, no help from anyone. He has also discovered the fun of swimming underwater. Yesterday, he swam underwater between my legs and back up again. Amazing! Soon he'll be doing laps in the pool. Nothing like a little regular exposure to boost a kid's confidence and skill.

A Day in the Life of the Beilfi

The sun usually rises on Chitengo at about 5:00 or 5:30 AM, although the birds herald the sun's arrival earlier than that most days. This morning Rich and our friend Carlos (who knows more of Mozambique's birds than nearly anyone else) spent the early hours listing to the birds and chronicling the order of the morning's songs. Another sure sound of morning is the sound of the guys arriving with the wheelbarrow behind our house to stock our hot water tank with coal to heat the water. (We get hot water twice a day - if all things are going as planned: once first thing in the morning and once about 12 hours later. )

The camp is up and moving before 7:00 AM. The typical workday here is 7:00 AM until 3:30 PM. Not being much of a morning person, I am trying to adapt to this schedule! We usually eat breakfast in our house (cereal or, if we're lucky, granola, or sometimes eggs--no toast as bread is tough to come by here--and tea (Milo for Ian - sort of like Ovaltine). We can also be found at the restaurant for a buffet breakfast of scrambled eggs and biscuits on days when we're feeling social. We are one of only two houses to have kitchen facilities, and those without must eat all their meals in the restaurant at the moment.

Our house is right in the middle of Chitengo, so our commute consists of walking 50 meters across the camp. Rich typically heads into meetings or to the computer lab/reception building (the only place with reliable electricity at the moment), and I head with Ian to our incipient gift shop. Ian spends his morning in "school" with his babysitter Natasha (22-year old Portuguese woman, daughter of my colleague Sophia) and several of the local kids (see another post for more about our school).

I am currently working with Sophia readying costumes for our group of women and kids who will perform songs and dances for tourists, starting with the President of Mozambique next Tuesday!!My summers in sewing class when I was a young teen are paying off now as I fashion shorts, tank tops, and skirts for our young performers on a little sewing machine Sophia found in Beira. The sewing isn't top quality, but it is sufficient for our purposes! And the outfits -- and the kids -- are very cute. (Hopefully this afternoon the kids and women will show up for rehearsal, and we'll get to see the costumes on! I will post photos here for you to see.)

We usually eat lunch at the restaurant to save the time of cooking and cleaning up in the middle of the day. Food at the restaurant is usually buffet-style with vegetables, salads of various kinds, rice or noodles, and some sort of meat or chicken in a sauce. Our cook is great -- he always prepares a variety of salads so we have plenty of vegetables -- green beans, cabbage, carrots, cucumbers, lettuce, green peppers, tomatoes, various bean salads, egg salad, etc. Alas for my waistline he also regularly makes dessert at lunchtime: chocolate mouse, fruit cocktail, flan, passion fruit pudding, or fresh fruit... yummy!

After lunch, Ian takes a nap while I either work or catch up on emails (and hopefully this blog). For the first week or more since we arrived, he needed me to stay in the house during his nap, but now so long as he knows where he can find me when he wakes up, he is comfortable with my leaving the house, which give me some much-needed freedom! When he wakes in the late afternoon, we usually have a swim in the small pool, and are often the only people there! The trees cast a beautiful deep shade over the pool during the late afternoon.

The sun sets around 5:00, and all is dark by 5:30. The generator that provides our power (we aren't yet serviced by electrical lines, but hope to be by September) comes on at about 5:15 PM, first time with electricity since lunchtime. We all don long sleeves and pants and spray exposed parts to prevent mosquito bites - we do live in a malaria zone, after all! Evening is a good time for socializing with a beer or G&T at the restaurant. We make dinner at home, in large part because dinner at the restaurant is served at 7:30 or 8:00 PM - quite late for a small boy. Noodles or rice with sauce, carrot salad or cucumber-tomato salad, or various other vegetables usually comprise our dinner. While we can access fresh vegetables, we also use a lot of canned food. Ian's favorite is creamed corn - anything with sugar. Milk here doesn't require refrigeration so long as the packages remain sealed, so we can buy milk by the case and keep it in the cupboard, opening them and storing them in the refrigerator as we need them. Same for juice.

Ian heads to bed at about 8:00, but rarely is asleep before 9PM. We all sleep under mosquito nets by night, and Ian is so accustomed to it by now that he wants to sleep under it during his nap as well, even though malaria mosquitoes don't pose a risk during this time. Rich and I read or work before bed, and tuck in when the power goes out at 10:00 PM. We light a candle inside a hurricane lamp that burns all night long as a nightlight for Ian, as the darkness of Africa without any lights whatsoever is truly dark!