Ching

The Conservancy driver, who has taken us to Lichinga and is ferrying us around town, is wonderful but has an aversion to specifics.

‘Quanto tempo até chega?’ (How long until you get here?)
‘Estou a vir’ (I’m coming)
‘Quando?’ (When?)
‘Estou no caminho’ (I’m on the way)

This exchange has been played out many a time the length and breadth of the world, stretching my overly-pedantic Anglo-Saxon ancestry to the seams.

Michelle rattled away on her laptop while I met a researcher from the Catholic University of Mozambique to talk about potential links for the honey project in the Reserve. She was a delight, and very helpful. It transpires she had been using Google Translate for all emails so when we met I had to get my Portuguese game face on, pronto.

Lichinga Airport is on the small, chaotic side. It only seems to have one destination: Nampula, the largest city in the north. People cram all sorts of cargo through check-in, meaning the departure lounge (over-egging it with this label) supports a strong strawberry smell, from people’s various crates. Lichinga is one of the few zones of Mozambique where strawberries can be grown.

In Mozambique photographing airports is frowned upon at best, an arrestable offence at worst. To mask it Michelle and I took a selfie on the runway but only ...CHING... came through from the sign. We did the hop towards Nampula, which is surrounded by a truly stunning array of inselbergs and outcrops, pictured. For the onward leg to Maputo, the obligatory Italian-looking nuns boarded.

In Maputo a wall of heat greeted us, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Back at my place we revelled in having poor to medium internet speeds, instead of poor to poor. We grabbed tasty food at a restaurant I’ve enjoyed before and I extolled the virtues of living in Maputo, which succeeded on Michelle. We dissected the South African art of saying ‘just now’ when they mean ‘in a little while’, which forever confuses Brits. We agreed to disagree.