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.