Capitalism and Castles

Its embarrassing to say that I have been here a month trying to, admittedly among other things, attract a large capital investment into this project and it was only last week that it dawned on me that it might make sense to write a formal project proposal. I downloaded a few documents on how to write an attractive proposal for the dispersal of funds to NGOs and have been working through what is required to be able to ask for a million dollars without sounding like an idiot. There are a variety of banking and governmental organisations which exist for the sole purpose of loaning money to microfinance banks (sometimes known as microfinance wholesalers) and all they need is a statement of intent and a couple of good people to run it, and of course promise to pay it back.

Despite the variety of different sources of funding for microfinance banks, the 'retail' side of it is still underfunded and there is a far bigger potential market than is being currently provided for. Ways to be able to provide low-cost, unfixed loans to banks are sorely needed and as large funders are often wary of risking large amounts of money, the public are increasingly being looked to through websites like Kiva (www.kiva.org) to attract people to fund small projects. A way in which legal and psychological constraints can be overcome so as to provide for the funding of such projects needs t be worked out so that microfinance can truly be turned into an economic base which is funded by the people, for the people.

It is the legal constraints which all too often hold up progress here too. The Mozambican currency, the 'metical', cannot legally be transferred out of the country and it is impossible to exchange outside the country. People are legally required to be paid in 'meticais' (plural) inside the country so that all wealth gained through working in Mozambique eventually returns to Mozambique. Very clever. Except when trying to attract investment from outside the country to be invested in bank accounts here and then be repaid (with interest) at the end of the agreed loan period. There is a way of declaring all incoming investment as a loan which will allow it to be repaid at a later date but no interest can be added to that on its way out. Accounts in foreign currencies can be kept in the country but do not carry the same very generous interest rate on savings (around 19%) that accounts in meticais do. Therefore, without relying on the dangerous task of consistently attracting enough future investment into a European account to repay the previous loan and therefore be able to keep a small quantity of constantly rolling capital in a high-interest account in Mozambique while turning over capital in a European account, a way has to be found of rewarding investors, big and small, for their faith in the ability of microfinance to repay their loan from a Mozambican account. That requires legislative change.

Legislative change is hard to bring about when it derives from a small rural charity which does not yet provide any banking facilities and is run by two recent university graduates with no discernible experience in banking, business or international development. So for now, transfers are difficult.

Furthermore, we are currently a registered charity. Charities cannot by law take money from the people they are trying to help, for very good reason. This means that we cannot begin to mobilise what is arguably a more important service than bank loans, the ability to save. Savings facilities were brought in well after loans in the history of microfinance but it is now generally accepted that one cannot adequately exist without the provision of the other. The lack of ability to save means that all the money brought in from the new businesses which are created is either constantly unsafe (the 'under-the-mattress' savings method) or is spent as quickly as possible on consumables, thereby totally contradicting one of the primary reasons for the provision of microfinance, that of income smoothing and the ability to cope with income shocks. Without the ability to easily transfer money in and out of the bank on a fully commercial basis, provide savings as well as loans provision and generally make it easier for the market to expand to those at the bottom, all of the evidence points towards the lack of long-term efficiency of banking provision. The reason for these difficulties? Government legislation. Which brings about the interesting question: Is the left-wing assertion that larger government involvement benefits those at the bottom universally true? Because in this case it is precisely that interference which is preventing capitalism from including those at the bottom of the pile in Mozambique.

Anyway, onto happier matters. Friday was my 23^rd birthday so we went for a weekend holiday to one of the most interesting places I've ever been- Ilha de Moçambique, Mozambique Island. Vasco de Gama, the famous Portuguese explorer and namesake of at least a couple of football teams, landed on Ilha in the 16^th century and started building churches. The Portuguese are good at building churches. When they started controlling the trade routes from India, around the Cape and up to Europe there were a variety of people who wanted to take relieve the Portuguese of their control over Ilha. At this point these churches turned into fortresses. The Portuguese managed to hold onto this tiny island (a couple of miles long, only a few hundred metres wide) and maintain it as the capital of Mozambique, then Portuguese East Africa, until the 19^th Century when, for economic reasons, the capital was changed to Maputo, then called Lorenço Marques. Anyway, brought up to the present day it is a bizarre mix of Arabic, Portuguese and African architecture packing 10,000 people into an island a fraction of the size of Unst.

We got the boat there early on Friday morning, the journey taking about 2 and a half hours and costing 50p. Upon arriving at the shore we learned first-hand why Ilha is not the ideal holiday location. Most tropical islands are considered beach resorts with swimming the main appeal. Ilha lacks that appeal for two reasons. The first is that much of the island is built up and what shoreline there is is stony and awkward to swim on. The second is that the overcrowding of the island means that it lacks proper sanitary facilities. People poo on the beach. For this reason the waters around Ilha are some of the most polluted in the world and extra special care must be taken when jumping out of a small sailing boat into the shallow waters to dodge such things.

Anyway, we went to check in at a small hotel called O Escondidinho. The hotel has about 20 rooms, is towards the upper range but still only costs £25-40 per night. The main appeal is the pool. Due to the aforementioned issues with swimming, pools are a major selling point in hotels on the island. This one though was extra special. The pool was dug into a platform next to the hotel bar, surrounded on two sides with the balconies where the rooms were situated. As well as being a major trade route for spices and arms being traded between India and Europe, Ilha was for a long time the world's busiest slave-trading port. Before the platform was dug out to create the lovely quaint pool, it was used to show off slaves to be bought by guests assembled on the balconies above. A memorial garden set inside the ruins of an old slave 'warehouse' five minutes down the road was dedicated to the memory of those who were trafficked through Ilha. The locals there however aren't unduly bothered by it, their ancestors being the collaborators with, not the victims of, the trade. The mainly white clientèle didn't seemed too fussed about this either, especially after the hot chocolate cake and ice-cream which the hotel is famous for.

We got lunch at a relatively new restaurant called 'The Golden Anchor', owned by a Swedish woman. The food was good and reasonably priced and it was a good start to the day. Its wide-open French window style doors meant that everyone walking past could see and smell the food and small groups of young boys would stand and pull faces at people sitting inside before being shouted at by the waiters and bolting down the street. One such young boy was selling a piece of history. He had three old coins, each bearing the face of a 19^th century King of Portugal with the years 1883 and 1884 on them. They looked genuine. The boy was selling the seemingly priceless artefacts for £2 each. Bargain. We had recently been informed that the Ilha Museum which was being done up with money donated by UNESCO (which had recently made Ilha a World Heritage Site) had been broken into after UNESCO hadn't included any security provision in its budget. We decided not to encourage the theft of priceless historical currencies by not purchasing them. They were cool though.

After lunch we went to the fortress, the barracks which proudly proclaimed to have fended off attacks from however many great civilisations and not fallen. It had much of your usual stuff- lots of cannons, high turreted walls, everything from bars to toilets to parade grounds inside, with a couple of churches thrown in for good measure too (including allegedly the oldest building in the southern hemisphere). But the most impressive thing was the water. Each of the rooftops was shaped in such a way as to provide an elaborate water diverting system. We hadn't really considered this before but a castle surrounded by salt-water which regularly came under siege may well need a lot of supplies of water. All of these channels lead down into three massive tanks of water, still existent after 500 years, providing absolutely clean, clear rainwater to whoever was stationed there. Say what you want about the Portuguese but they knew a thing or two about water.

The entire castle was built with slave labour and took over 60 years to complete (our guide and friendly army-man Essiar told us, before asking for 'a coke' at the end of the tour...). If slaves refused to build they were taken outside the castle walls, tied to a concrete pillar and killed by firing squad, before being lobbed over the rocks into the sea. People tended to keep building. After the threat of overthrow had reduced a bit a bridge was built to the mainland. A single-track, rickety old bridge stretches over two miles to connect this bizarre place with portuguese architecture lining every street and grand looking mansions crumbling into the sea, to the mainland, mud-huts as far as the eye can see and no discernible tourism for miles.

Ilha provides another prime example of the huge demand for banking facilities in the region. There is a beautiful old bank in Ilha, still with all the old architecture inside and with the luxury of an ATM in the porch. A common sight outside the doors, as it is in next to every ATM in Nampula City and indeed the whole region is queues. People queue for over an hour, sometimes nearer two or three, to withdraw money. If there is not queue outside an ATM it is more often than not because it has run out of money, as had happened this weekend. People here are so desperate for facilities to save and borrow that they will spend most of an afternoon waiting to withdraw from a system which was meant to make the whole operation much faster. I'm not looking to incorporate ATMs into a microfinance bank but a similarly quick and easy way to take out money is definitely needed.

The weekend ended on a bit of a downer as Celisse got food-poisoning from a dodgy prawn curry and so Saturday night was pretty relaxed. We just caught the boat on Sunday as it was setting off five minutes early, nearly completely empty. Public transport across Africa tends to leave when its full and so this early exit was very rare. We soon discovered the reason for the hurry. Our tiny little wooden boat was being tossed about by a strong wind and tide that regularly splashed waves over the side and more than a couple of times had everyone on board (an old man, a jolly middle-aged woman, the skipper and his grandson and us two) collectively clenching. The journey to Ilha can sometimes take up to 3 and a half hours depending on the wind. We made it back in less than one, feeling a little worse for wear when we got back on dry land.

All in all a mixed but for the most part excellent way to spend my 23^rd  birthday. Back to the upcoming week, I'm gonna really make a good go at this project proposal, hopefully work on it for the next couple of weeks and fire it off to someone with money. Celisse is constantly gaining more students to teach english to and the one remaining dog is clinging to life. I hope we'll all be doing exactly the same in a weeks time.

Small Developments

This week has been one of progress in lots of ways. Its now Sunday morning and my body hurts all over, but I'll put that down to how hard I'm working.

For those of you following the animal news- I've buried 2 more dogs who both curled up and died of the same mysterious illness. The last remaining one has some growths on his back and legs and is starting to look a bit pathetic too. The cat is still heroic as ever.

Anyway, we've been trying to meet more people and get involved in some things this week. And what better place to start than the pub? Last Sunday we went to 'Branco Bar' (translates as 'white bar', reflecting the colour of its walls and the origin of its owner rather than an entry requirement) for a couple of early afternoon pints. The bar consists of a small shop inside where you can buy groceries and cold drinks. The seating area is a kind of paved patio out the front, partly shaded by a couple of large umbrellas and a mango tree. When we got there the only folk there were the manager and his drunk brother Manuel, a couple of old guys sitting quietly in the corner with their bottle of gin and a couple of excitable middle-aged women gesticulating their bingo-wings. Drunk brother Manuel wandered up to try and chat up Celisse and cursed the cat that was casually wandering about (I think it was a different cat to the one we have here at the hotel but with similar colours and the same arrogant swagger, who knows?). His brother spoke a couple of words of English but didn't get involved. The old guys just smiled quietly in the corner and went back to their gin. But then up came Muaco, an english teacher at the school who had spent a few years in Malawi and acted as our translator with drunk brother Manuel and bingo-women who followed him in cackling to themselves. Muaco taught English and Portuguese to primary school kids in Mossuril and asked us to come and help. We bought him a coke and agreed to come along. To once again reflect the similarities with back home, some of the most useful and interesting people you meet are in pubs.

And so it was that at 6.55am on Tuesday morning we met Muaco outside the school and followed him into class. The primary school is made up of several large airy classrooms surrounding a small courtyard. The secondary school next door was rebuilt a couple of years ago and is large and shiny but the primary school still looks a bit haggered. After introducing ourselves to the headmaster we walked into class and were met by about 30 pairs of brown eyes ranging in age from 8 to 18. Grades in Mozambique are based entirely on academic achievement and never on age. Because of the war, incomplete education and inability to pay for school every year, there are people in their mid-20s still in primary school. By the time we had introduced ourselves to the class and sat at a desk in amongst the class (Muaco wanted us to assess his teaching technique and give him advice) there was a stream of latecomers wandering into the class which reached 58 students by 20 minutes into the lesson. The class was an hour and a half long and focused on modes of transport. Muaco was able to control his class very well and there is a high level of respect for elders and teachers in this culture. I was struck by the pupils willingness to volunteer to speak and conduct conversation role-plays and it seemed they were picking it up. Then at 8.30 a man outside repeatedly hit a metal rod against a metal hub-cap hanging from a tree in the courtyard. That was the bell. Muaco asked if we were able to join him in his next class so we wandered into another classroom, this time slightly smaller, with much older students and still numbering over 50 of them. This was the second 'stream' the same class but split on the basis of age and ability. After we had introduced ourselves there was a knock at the door, about 10 of the pupils from the first class had a free period and wanted to come and learn the same class again, mostly due to the presence of Celisse. I made this assumption on the basis of our introductions. In both classes we stood at the front, said our names and where we were from and Muaco invited any questions. In both classes there was only one, it was the same one and it was directed only to Celisse. “Sinhora, are you married?”, upon hearing that she wasn't, every one of them had a vested interest in showing their proficiency in the English language. You can have all the bells, whistles and educational incentives you want but put a single woman that the boys fancy and the girls want to speak to in a classroom and you are guaranteed to get results! Its for this reason that Celisse was asked to help out with teaching and extra tutoring on a semi-regular basis and I tried to save face by muttering that I was very busy with other stuff anyway.

My man-flu hasn't really eased off either. Headaches, sweats and exhaustion led me to think that I might have malaria so me and one of the waiters here at the hotel walked to the hospital to get me checked out. I don't know whether its a throwback to its socialist heritage or just its effective governance now but Mozambique has particularly good provision of public services. The hospital set up is as impressive as that of the schools. Since I was here last summer, two new wings of the hospital have been built with builders frantically working on a third. The cost of seeing the doctor is 2 pence, it doesn't matter how poor you are, you can afford 2 pence to see the doctor. The doctor saw me immediately and spoke fairly good english, reducing the need for Waese the waiter to translate (or me to attempt my portuguese). He explained that the power was off so I'd have to sit and wait a bit longer for the manual test to be conducted. He sent me through to another room where a different doctor pricked my finger and dripped blood onto a small plastic instrument, followed by some clear solution. He shook it for 10 minutes and looked at me in the same way that a school nurse might look at you if you're screaming and bawling over a scratch on your knee. “Negativo” he announced with feigned surprise and ushered me out of the room with a scribbled and stamped (you can't get anywhere in Mozambique without an official stamp) note to take back to the original doctor. I was prescribed a cocktail of different pills and tablets, some of which I recognised as paracetamol and vitamin tablets, some of which I just trusted him on, and went to pay. Prescription charges are set at 10p in Mozambique, regardless of amount or type of medication. This also includes the charge to see the doctor as this would only apply as an extra if he didn't prescribe anything. Therefore my 10 day supply of cough and cold medicine and the reassurance that I don't have malaria is most definitely within the average Mozambicans budget.

In terms of life here at the hotel, its still coming along. Work is continuing on a couple of dorm rooms in the back courtyard to house volunteers and a turning circle is being prepared in the carpark to improve access. There is still no running water but well water is carried up every morning to be used in the kitchen and bathrooms and boiled to make it safe for drinking. Work hasn't started on doing up the mud-hut I'm set to move into as the family who sold it are still waiting for their new house to be built before they can move out. We're chipping in with helping in the kitchen, washing clothes and trying to keep the place running. Guests are intermittent but the staff are more than capable of dealing with them when they do turn up. I still have impressive tan-lines (read burn-lines) on my arms from washing clothes in a bucket the other day. Its amazing how much you appreciate washing machines when you have to scrub every item of clothing individually in a cold-water basin with a packet of soap suds before rinsing it, wringing it and hanging it up.

Anyway, I suppose I better speak a bit about the subject of this blog. In terms of work this week, funding applications have continued, thus far without reply. I've approached various car manufacturers asking for charity rates on a solid vehicle that won't destroy itself in a couple of months as others have consistently done. In return I'm offering a platform for improving their reputation for corporate social responsibility and, assuming their vehicle does indeed survive, the ability to base an advertising campaign around the boast that their car can survive in some of the most inhospitable places in the world (inhospitable in terms of roads, otherwise really quite hospitable) and increase their sales in the region and the lucrative NGO vehicle market. I reckon its quite a good deal but then I'm not the one being asked to donate a brand new off-road vehicle.

The African Development Bank has various loans for microfinance development and business creation but they are all focused on the private sector and are out of the reach of NGOs such as ourselves. The uncertain and unaccountable nature of NGO work means that banking institutions are not always happy to lend money to them and without a large presence in the western world, funding is few and far between. I'm planning to approach state-based development organisations in the next week in the hope that we can link in with some of their business interests in the region and help to improve bilateral relations between themselves and Mozambique. Its an awful lot off writing letters and finding email addresses and the nature of the industry is that one reply out of a hundred requests is a good return. Ah well, keep on trucking.

On the home front, requests have been trickling in as always. A former nurse wants to set up a chemist's shop, hopefully the only well-stocked one in a 200km radius. A guard wants to set up a fish shop and a teacher wants to set up a chicken farm. But until we know portuguese, have money and can transfer it easily those are nothing more than good intentions.

One business which is doing very well in Mossuril is an aloe-based industry owned by two Belgians. Bel-Moz makes brandy, after dinner digestives (the drinks, not the biscuits) and cosmetics and shower gels from predominantly aloe plants. They came to Mossuril 7 years ago and have built the business up from then. Most of the raw materials they use is produced locally and people are paid a fair per-kilo price for providing plants and making packaging materials. There is a special price for local people to buy the products, a fraction of what it costs to anyone outside Mossuril and no products are being exported outside Mozambique, thus returning all profits and returns within the country. Its organic, without chemicals and fair trade. If they did export to the West they would make an absolute bomb, I think they're pretty happy keeping it simple here in Mozambique though. As we were leaving we saw a guy hollowing out a huge tree truck into what looked like some kind of canoe. We assumed it was just a heavy boat until it was explained that this was one of two bathtubs for the house. If you have a nice house, a thriving business and two solid, polished wood bathtubs why would you want to live anywhere else?

Which brings us up to yesterday afternoon. Muaco said he would speak to the organiser of the football team that I had known only as 'Os Professores', the teachers. I was asked to come along for a training session and that Muaco would pick me up at 3pm. At 4.30pm he wandered up and explained that the game only starts when people are ready. Despite their name 'the teachers' are made up mostly of students, probably between 18 and 25, with a couple of older guys thrown in too. I've played football in Africa before and I've played in teams where very little English is spoken. What I haven't played in is a game where nobody speaks English and very few people communicate even in Portuguese, preferring the tribal language Makua. I've also never played on a pitch which is predominantly made of soft sand and where solid ground is concentrated on the paths which are walked across the pitch when its not in use. A game like this requires the tactical consideration of more than just passing and moving. It requires working around large patches of sand, it means that most goals are scored from close range and in the air. It means that the long ball game is vastly favoured as passing along the ground is the most uncertain game that can be played. It was a huge education to me in how different football can be from what I know.

I walked up to the pitch with Muaco, put my boots on and knocked about the ball for a bit. Muaco assured me he would look after my shoes while I was playing. He used to play in goal but hasn't recovered from an injury he sustained 6 months ago. We walked up to meet the organiser and get his blessing that I was allowed to play. I was given a red and yellow striped shirt and explained that I would feel happiest at centre-back. No bother, I went and stood there and sank six inches into the sand. The goal mouth was like wading through treacle. Initial exchanges showed the this was a very physical game and mostly based around marauding runs up the wings (where most of the grass happened to be). I did as best as I could and put in a couple of early crunching tackles to try and show I wasn't just the token white boy. We went one-nil up with a break-away run from the wee guy upfront. They hit back with a crossed in ball met with looping header from the guy I was meant to be marking. Thats how it stayed until half-time. The crowd was slightly more populated than the average Unst FC game, probably 30 or 40 folk, mostly old men. The half-time team-talk was scarily similar to Unst FC. We sat down on the pitch and listened to the best player giving tactical advice and using his hands a lot to signify runs and positioning. Once in a while one of the other assembled company of fans and old men would give their opinion of what needed to be done being met with mixed responses of silent agreement or vocal abuse. Not that I understood a word that was said as it was all in Makua. Muaco came up with my shoes and reassured me that I was doing alright and the old guys weren't entirely unimpressed. I looked around to try and locate water and didn't see any in sight. I could feel the factor 50 sweating off my face and it was only my total covering of dirt and sand on my legs and arms that was saving them from a similar fate. After my relatively productive performance at centre-back in the first half, I was pushed up to centre-midfield in the second and had to contend with the sand pit of a centre-circle. Half-way through the second half I couldn't move and they pushed me upfront to try and get something out of me. Apart from a couple of free-kicks gained and a spectacular collision with their goalkeeper, I had very little further influence on the game. Their captain (the tall quiet organiser) knocked in the winner with about 10 minutes left and my first game for 'os professores' ended in a defeat. I wasn't invited to go with them for an away game today but was asked back to training on Tuesday. I suspect I'm going to have to gain some serious fitness before I become a regular feature in the team.

Since this is surely my longest blog entry yet i'll maybe leave it at that. As I said before, this week will once again be spent begging for large sums of money and trying to get a car. Verb conjugations are coming along and on Tuesday we've been invited to go to a primary school portuguese class which might also be a plan. I'm intending to spend today watching the old-firm game on BBC text, swimming in the sea and trying to recover full movement in my legs. Lazy Sunday afternoon.

Dead Dogs and Empty Pockets

The last two weeks have been marked by several new experiences. The first was burying a puppy.

In the courtyard behind the hotel are puppies rescued after their mother was poisoned. They can't be more than a few weeks old and are a welcome distraction from the work here. Since their birth however, they have suffered from a variety of illnesses collectively. The biggest, most aggressive of them is set to become my employer's guard dog. The others were to an extent up for grabs. The smallest, predominantly white and light brown, had a hugely swolen belly and could hardly move without falling on his face, this may have been the reason for his later eye-infection. The second smallest, a black and brown slink of a thing that will look like one of those devil dogs when it gets big is painfully thin but still kicking along nicely. The second biggest, a fluffy brown lump with bags of enthusiasm, suddenly took ill and couldn't move, eat or drink. Not a great start to my second week in paradise. Both of the other scrawny lads seem to be sticking it out though.

As well as the young, clumsy puppies hidden away in the back the hotel also plays host to a couple of very self-assured yet annoyingly vocal cats. They catch rats, beg for food and wander around like they own the place but are generally left alone to do so. The most impressive aspect of them by far is their ability to fall asleep under the coal fire and no flinch when large sparks and pieces of burning coal fall onto them from above. Anyway, enough animal news.

Currently loan provision is based on a first-come-first-served basis with people approaching Lisa with an idea and discussing the costs and repayments involved with it. This is then followed by a process of applying for funding for each individual loan, a hugely time-consuming and frustrating process. To get around this and to get a good reserve of funds for current and future projects, allowing for long repayment periods, we need a lump sum. In considering the handful of projects which have come forward looking for funding in the last week or so, the initial outlay is going to be a 6-figure sum with repayment, although assured, taking between 5 and 15 years. Although these projects are useful to bring in large quantities of interest and support very poor people either through owning businesses or gaining formal employment, it is clear that they require large quantities of initial capital. The fairytale view of the $10 loan that leads to a multi-million dollar empire is not always possible and in this rapidly developing society with the temptations of wealth around every corner, profit does not necessarily get pumped straight back into business development.

For example, one of the mud-huts about a hundred yards from the hotel we're in is a thriving business. Like many other places around the rural developing world it functions as a cinema and disco. All this requires is a big telly, a bigger sound system and some of the oldest, cheesiest Hollywood and Bollywood movies in existence to play on an old DVD player. When films aren't playing then the speakers blast either the 'hits of today' or the community radio station which also plays the 'hits of today'. The knowledge of the existence of TVs, DVD players and large sound systems creates a demand for them and a social pressure to gain them. In this sense, profits made from a new business will initially be used for loan repayment and latterly for leisure or consumption. The thinking is- If I have a good business, I'm making a bit of money and I'm happy, why should I work harder and risk all that? Which is a very compelling argument. What this creates however is an impediment to the economic development of a rural area which is composed both of structural constraints in terms of the provision of business development loans and societal constraints on the willingness to take the risks required for economic development. It is for this reason that I have to be careful in how I conduct my work here- Can we always assume that a developing country wants to perpetually develop? If I get that assumption wrong it has the potential to lose a lot of money for the bank and repeat the mistake which has been made by Westerners in Africa for hundreds of years, to think that they want to be like us.

So most of the last week was spent applying for funding. Funding for the initial bank capital, for existing loan requests and for administrative purposes within the charity. The difficulty with loan and grant applications is appearing professional without taking the piss. There are many funding bodies which won't consider a funding application for less than $100,000, still more that won't take you seriously unless you ask for half a million. However, if they ask what two recent university graduates are doing asking for a 6-figure investment in a bank that doesn't exist yet, we need to be on the ball enough to justify it.

The excitement around Mossuril at the minute is that 'Banda Larga' or broadband is being installed. In theory it should have been in yesterday but as is the way, things in Africa always take a bit longer. Partly expecting this delay, we went to Nampula city for a day on Thursday morning for the principal purpose of having a day on the broadband which is already installed there. The 3 hour journey along mostly paved, but occasionally dirt, roads started at 3am, getting us into Nampula for just after 6am for a cup of coffee and a toastie before things kicked off. We both had to renew our visas at the immigration office and buy a couple of things too.

The law in Mozambique requires that you carry formal identification on you at all times. This meant that handing over our passports for the week long processing period to be replaced by a hand-written, stamped assurance that it is good hands is more than a little bit worrying. Especially as later that day two young policemen, both with AK-47s slung over their shoulders jogged across the road to perform a 'random check'. The one that came to me was an enthusiastic smiley man with a little bit of English. After checking that we were on the right side of the law they asked for us to 'buy them a coke', a common euphemism for passing over a wee bit of cash. This is always a difficult situation as every possible action can backfire. Option 1: Hand over the cash- The guys could accuse you of attempting to bribe a policeman, a much bigger offence, and demand a much bigger bribe. Option 2: Don't hand over cash- They create an offence that you have no knowledge about and threaten to keep you in the cells overnight unless you pay a much bigger bribe. So we (I say we, actually just a genius move on the past of Celisse) just bought them a coke. They insisted that it was ok and they could buy the coke themselves with our money but our insistence that 'of course we would buy them a coke for all their hard work' meant that we covered our backs and that theres a very good chance those guys won't bother us again as we put them to so much trouble the first time.

The internet cafe in Nampula is in a small shopping centre which also houses one of the most expensive hotels in Nampula, a rapidly growing city with a huge economic potential. It also has a nice cafe with expresso coffee and an attempt at a fried breakfast which was admirable, if a bit off the mark. The most interesting part of the building however is the supermarket. Although we eat and drink very well here at the hotel in Mossuril, the sight of tobasco, pringles and peanut butter were too hard to give up. Then we realised why such brands have not taken off in Africa. £4 for a tube of pringles is not friendly. £5 for a bottle of shower gel is pretty hellish. This supermarket is not only for the elite of Nampula, it seems to be for the elite of the world who are willing to pay silly prices for western products because they are sold in a nice smelling air-conditioned supermarket. We won't be making that mistake again.

The Tenth Pan-African Games are on at the minute in Maputo, the capital of Mozambique. Although the excitement hasn't entirely reached up to Nampula, there was evidence of interest and investment in the spectacle with big games being projected onto screens in local parks and sports grounds. I watched Mozambique crash out of the women's handball championships in an epic game against Kenya. Due to our lack of TV up here (and the cinema's unwillingness to show sport) I haven't been able to keep up with much more of it. Plus the fate of Scotland's Euro 2012 qualifying and the rugby world cup are keeping me up to date with all the sport I can take.

Apart from that the only thing to report is that I have man-flu. It is well known in the West how debilitating an illness man-flu is and how much sympathy must be paid to the sufferers of it. African man-flu is a more potent strain of this terrible disease. As ever, I am fighting this ailment with pineapple gin and vitamin tablets but if anyone has any further advice I'm open to suggestions.

The plan for the next week or so is to get over this terrible affliction, keep applying for funding and hopefully get somewhere with it, or at least be able to recognise what location or industry is the most likely to help us out. I've been asked to play on the teacher's football team and from watching a game the other day, I should really get in training for it. We're looking to secure a space for an office and teaching rooms in the building next to the hotel and hopefully we can get somewhere with that too. And of course the work on verb conjugations will never end.

Sunset and Salt

My first week in Mossuril has been full, the way I hope it will be for a long time to come. My trip here was long but relatively uneventful. The few things I did learn were that pints cost £8 in Dubai airport and by far the best place to sit, eat and relax in Johannesburg airport is the Smoking Lounge, whether you smoke or not. Whiskies in the departure lounge bar in Maputo are split into two categories of 'Old Whisky' and 'New Whisky' and Nampula airport is the only place other than Sumburgh where its tractors, not airport vehicles, which pull the trollies with all the bags off the plane.

I landed in Nampula airport an hour late after the plane had to refuel and let passengers off in Beira, half-way along the journey. Nampula is either the second or third biggest city in Mozambique and is continuing to grow with large hotels and shopping centres catering to a large population of NGO workers and predominantly Indian businessmen. I only stayed one night in Nampula before catching the 'shapa' to Mossuril. Shapa is the collective term for all forms of cheap public transport around Mozambique. They take a wide variety of different shapes and sizes from 50-seater coaches to single-cab pick-ups with people clinging onto the sides. We were lucky, we had an old Chinese city bus designed to hold about 30 people. Along with my large rucksacks, the hallmark of many a white man in Africa, baggage included large sacks of grain and vegetables and live chickens and goats. Shapa stations are notorious around Africa for being a centre of crime, both serious and petty. Nampula was different, we were left alone by hawkers and traders, not approached by would-be pickpockets and had our bags packed securely in the following trailer. We were even charged less than we should have been, something that is all too often the other way around. I'd like to think it was due to the pleasant characters of the locals though it may have had something to do with the AK-47 the patrolling policeman had lazily slung around his shoulder.

After a 4 hour journey along a mostly tarred, but sometimes dirt, road we reached Mossuril and headed for our home for the next year or so, Sunset Boulevard. I'm living here with Celisse, an American that I went to school with in Swaziland, who is managing the volunteer programme here. She arrived the week before I did and is proving very good at not laughing at my attempts at speaking Portuguese, as well as someone to bounce ideas off. Sunset is a restaurant and 'Pensão', a couple of small hotel rooms akin to a small guest house. It is run entirely by local staff, predominantly recruited from the college of tourism, another one of Lisa's projects to develop tourism and economic interest in the area. As well as functioning as a bar and restaurant the grounds include a basic internet cafe providing computing skills to the local community and accommodation for volunteers, on which the foundation relies for skills and income.

My first few days were spent settling in. I spent 6 weeks here last summer but it was still helpful to have a couple of days to rest and adjust. I met the staff who have started in the past year, got myself used to the surroundings again and enjoyed the holiday which would precede my work.

My last day of relative relaxation took me to Ilha de Moçambique, the former capital city. The island has a population of around 10,000 people despite being only 300 metres wide a no more than a couple of miles long. We got there by dow, a type of sailing boat with a sail that could be fixed to 2 or 3 different parts of the boat for maximum speed depending on the wind. We didn't have any wind so we had to row. The boat had a variety of holes in its side and seemed to be held together almost entirely by string but sure enough, 3 and a half hours later, we reached Ilha. A top-up of the electricity meter, a pint and some food and a quick swim later we were back on the boat heading back with a fresh breeze guiding us home in less than an hour.

Work started on Sunday with a trip to the salt flats of 2 of the members of the salt producers' association, a cooperative formed of around 30 producers of what has for over 1,000 been the primary industry of Mossuril. We were picked up in a large white Nissan by the Chairman of the association. He took us to his 27 hectare site which employed 30 people to pan for salt, dig new flats and manage the fish-farm which adjoins them. He claimed that he had the capacity to employ double that amount of staff but didn't have the initial outlay to pay them until the salt could be sold and didn't want the stress of having to vastly increase the size of his operation when 1kg of 'raw', untreated salt sells for 2 pence. What the association wants is a factory where each producer can treat the salt with iodine to make it edible and a truck to transport it to the point of sale. With these items they can vastly increase their operations, the number of people they employ and the money coming into the economy of Mossuril. We would seek to provide a loan for them to buy both of those things. Until then, we are going to experiment with a form of bridging loan designed specifically for the salt producers. The loan will allow them to pay their staff throughout the year to maintain production and to repay the loan when they sell their salt in bulk. This problem is purely down to cash-flow and due to the inelastic demand for salt, there is almost a guarantee of repayment if the members of the association work together in selling their product.

This would be a large amount of money lent out to what are effectively middle-class Mozambicans. The benefit this has for the smaller producers and potential customers of the bank though is that the large chunk of interest that is repaid by the salt producers will allow time and effort to be put into the provision of smaller loans while still maintaining a sustainable business model. This combination of large and small loans allows banks to both make money and continue its commitment to social development, thus overcoming the 'microfinance schism' in achieving both. Moreover the expansion of the salt production will vastly increase employment in the area, improving quality of life and attracting new people to the area. All in all a very positive project.

The last few days have been spent trying to prioritise what needs to be done for this relatively large project. Funding needs to be gained in the form of a grant or soft loan for the first phase of loan requests, especially for the salt producers. However the most pressing thing for me personally is to improve my Portuguese. Currently I am almost totally dependent on translators which is clearly not viable for a long-term project. The sooner I can become fluent in Portuguese, the sooner I can take some ownership of the projects I am working on.

Saying that, life here is full of surprises and distractions. On Monday, the English teacher at the local school came here and asked me to help him. He is a calm, well spoken man, probably in his late 20s who moved here from his home in Nampula City three years ago to, as he put it, make his own way in life away from the shadow of his father. A part of me knew exactly what he meant. As well as teaching he has been studying for his degree in English language which he does by distance-learning. University is expensive for local people in Mozambique and I didn't know how, on a small teacher's salary, he could afford this luxury as well. He explained that he has had a variety of jobs and small businesses, everything from chicken farming to working for World Vision. He asked what I was doing here and seemed interested in the project. I don't know if he was fishing for a loan or a job when it's all set up but either way, I he may be exactly the type of down-to-earth, intelligent, educated local Mozambican that could be very useful to this project.