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.