by Justus and Thijs
Como você está? (How are you?) Is a sentence we use every day now. We are settling and getting used to the area. People at the local market recognize us and are not yelling anymore like we are tourists. Our Portuguese is improving which makes life easier.
Last week we had some meetings, one at the Municipality in de the outskirts of Maputo. We first had a very productive conversations with a proud AutoCAD expert and afterwards with three men who know a lot about the sanitation system of Maputo. After the meetings we went to visit the wastewater treatment plant, which was interesting to see. From a meeting at DNA we got plenty of documentation that had us busy the rest of the week. We have been promised more information about the wastewater network. we feel that our project is going quite well!
Between all those busy days we also had some fun. Last Saturday we went to see a national football game, Moçambique – Cabo Verde. It was a nice insight look in the African culture, Mozambique won and everybody was very happy. Going to a football match is also a little bit different than in The Netherlands. We went there with eighteen students, Brazilian, Dutch and Austrian. But there is not just a train you can take, no you just hire a “chapa” (minivan) and fill it with eighteen students. That is about the double as is allowed back home, but it was a really nice experience.
Football match in Maputo.
On Thursday evening we went to a real Dutch “borrel” (drinking and chatting) with a lot of the Dutch expats in Maputo and Mozambique. It was really nice to talk Dutch with people for one evening, we spoke a lot and even arranged a meeting at the Dutch Embassy.
Até à próxima semana,
Thijs and Justus
