At the same time, in December, living, working, and playing in Mozambique felt like more “work” than it every has before. Continued problems with my contract (still on temporary contract), negotiating a morass of bureaucracy at work, related to borrowing a friend's car to travel of the holidays, etc have been slowly cracking away my eggshell of happiness here. Things which seem like they should be relatively simple and straightforward to take care of end up taking a lot of time and energy to address.
For example, when we were up near Tofo for Christmas, my friend Roger and I went into town on day to restock on food. This was intended to be a short, simple, and fun excursion.
We managed to sort out some things, finding a nice variety of fresh fruits and vegetables in the market. Fuel on the other hand was another matter. The town of Inhambane (the provincial capital) had run out of fuel due to the influx of tourists over the holidays. Roger and I drove to Tofo (half hour away) but they too were running out. I had less than quarter of a tank left so worried we would get stuck with no petrol (no AAA here so something generally to be avoided!) After trips to several ATMs (all the cash in Inhambane had run out as well), we did manage to fill up the tank and arrive safely back, but the day during our holiday left me feeling like i needed another vacation!
At the same time, we did some diving while in Tofo. Christmas morning was a particularly good dive. Diving in the ocean (as opposed to fresh water) one quickly notices the strong effect of the ebb and flow of the currents, which were particularly strong that morning. Every couple seconds, the tides would pull you 4-6 feet forward, 4-6 back. The immediate reaction is to fight the tides, to swim against the tides, we were often in small caves or underwater crevices with fragile coral as well as potentially dangerous marine life (e.g. scorpionfish) on both sides. One quickly finds however that the tides are much stronger than any of my kicking and that fighting the currents only made me tiring.
At the same time, at one point, I began to resist the fighting, just breathe and let myself go through the ebb and flow, giving a quick kick when the current was pushing my forward. When I did this, I realized I could stay in control, I would not bump into the coral or anything else, and I could swim through it all.
This lesson seems important for my life above water as well. Life in Mozambique continues to pose daily challenges but I'm trying to not fight it, take a deep breath, and perhaps give a good kick i feel the current is moving in my direction.
And both under and above the water, if I do learn to “go with the flow” as it were, the life will bring me some beautiful experiences and moments. One of the highlights from the diving was getting to snorkel on Christmas morning with two different whale sharks, a somewhat rare but beautiful graceful and awe-inspiring animals I've ever seen.
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