Learning to Live in Nampula

We have now been in Nampula for a week and are starting to learn the ropes.  We have driven around town enough to know most of the main streets and have learned a few back roads to get between our house and the hanger.  We spent much of the week learning to shop, trying to get cell phones, and working on getting our immigration documents.  We also got to meet our new dog, Charlie.  He is still pretty shy around us, so hopefully he will warm up to us by the time we get into a house and he comes to live with us. 

9 month old Charlie

 Shopping has been quite an experience.  As first time shoppers, we definitely needed a guide to help us find the stores as some of them seem a little hidden to the newcomer (there is no one-stop shopping superstore here in Nampula).  There used to be a larger grocery store in town, but it burned down recently (causing prices to go up) and probably won’t be rebuilt for another year.  Our first day of shopping, we went to three different stores to find ingredients for the meals we had planned to make.  Only finding a few of the necessary items at the first store, we went on to a meat store nearby.  It has been confusing trying to convert kilos to pounds and meticais to dollars to be able to get a feel for what we are actually paying for stuff (hopefully that will come soon!).

Back road to the Airport

 The third store we went to was in the central part of the city.  When you park, men will race to your car offering to guard it while you shop.  When you come back, you pay your guard about 5 mets (less than 20 cents).  We were told the unemployment rate here in Nampula is about 80%, so many look for opportunities to make money any way they can.  After this shopping trip, we had several ingredients for each meal we planned to make, but we didn’t have all of the ingredients for even one of them!  We borrowed some items from some fellow missionaries who were already stocked up and managed to make homemade tortillas and refried beans and have some pretty good burritos!

Burrito and a Coke!

Later in the week, we found a few new stores to go to, including the central market.  Unlike the other stores where prices are set and you go to a cash register to check out, this is an open air market where you walk past the live chickens to get to the various vendors selling produce.  It was a little harder to buy items here without knowing Portuguese, but we were able to get some items we couldn’t find in the stores. 

Center part of Nampula

 We needed to make notarized copies of some of our documents (so we don’t have to carry around passports everywhere), so we went with one of the guys who works in the hanger (who doesn’t speak English), to the office where you can have that done.  It was pretty interesting having Dave drive while getting Portuguese directions, but we made it there and they took our passports and driver’s licenses and told us to come back later.  It was not a good feeling to let those items leave our sight, but we came back an hour later and got them back along with the certified copies with no problem.  Later that day we got our immigration paperwork started which will allow us to stay for one year (currently we only have a 60 day temporary visa. We will get the other renewed each year).  Pray that the paperwork will go through smoothly so that we can stay, and also so that we can start the process of having our shipment sent over. 

Here is a little video of some of the driving here.  The first clip is the road we drive on to get from our house to one of the main roads.  It would be a dirt bike enthusiast’s dream!  The next clip is on the back road to get to the airport.  You can tell the rainy season wreaks havoc on the roads!

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