umbelúzi, boane e namaacha

do you remember when at school your teachers or your little elementary school friends would ask where were your dad and mom born? strangely enough i never said "they're from mozambique", my daddy has always been from UMBELÚZI.
wierd huh? well i never got positive reactions like "so is mine!" or "wow", i got mostly things like "huh?!", "where?" or just blank faces. while all my friends on holidays would go away "p'rá terra" i could only do that on one side of the family, but on my dad's side, things were mostly reduced to Lisbon, fine with me, but why couldn't i go to Umbelúzi?
"well bicuka, it's very far away, and our house is probably gone by now." i always thought it's be gone because they'd use it as a battle field!
my dad was born in Lourenço Marques, but on his 2nd day of life he moved straight to Umbelúzi, my grandfather was the director of the IIAM-estação agrária de umbeluzi for a long time, in two different times, the first of which my dad grew up in a colonial house, did his primary school in a colonial building, watched plants grow, gigantic trees become his hideout, a far away horizon... it would have been the best place for summer holidays.
the house was in every picture, every album. my grandmother has always had in her front hallway, as soon as you walk in her house, a big drawing of this house hanging on the wall. noone is indefferent to it, no one cannot past by it without looking twice, and i was always jealous that i had never seen it. my grandfather used to tell stories about it, of course to make us scared he told us about every bug, insect and disgusting squishy animal you could find in their garden... it'd scare me, but he would always say "if you had been there like your daddy and played with all these things you wouldn't be scared" and i'd cry because i didn't like being NOT from Umbelúzi.

the house just takes your breath away, it was there in front of me, big, huge even, restored, still standing with the beauty i always imagined, if not more, it's still part of the IIAM, noone lives there, just offices, the garden is so colorful, the trees are bigger than i thought possible, the imbundeiros are just too big to discribe... but what i couldn't stop thinking about, thinking that i would even end up crying with emotion, instead i couldn't stop smiling, i was standing on the veranda of the 1rst floor where my dad would ride his bike around the house. which kid wouldn't love that? a veranda that would turn into a highway for your bike? of course there seemed to be enough land to bike on, but especially when the river would flood out and the helicopter would pick up my daddy to go to the city, then the veranda seemed big enough. actually it's huge!
a bit later in his childhood after a year or so in Lisbon, where the kids at his school would make fun of him because he'd wear shorts and my grandmother wore pants, they came back to Umbelúzi but this time to another house, a very portuguese looking house from the 60s.
it was the cutest thing! so adorable i wanted to buy it... i never thought of buying a house, of course if i had the money i'd buy the big one, but i could make that one my library/coffe shop/baby school/movie theater/architecture studio project and this one my little hide away. this house felt mine. i looked into every window, every door, didn't find one piece of furniture, no tables, no beds, nothing... I HAD A CHANCE!
wrong again! this very smiling couple poped out of nowhere, and scared me sooo much.
at first i was a bit jealous. they couls live there. they said they had no money to buy anything so they slept on the floor, had a few clothes, no electricity, no warm water, but their smile was bigger and whiter than i'd presume people could have living on so little.

o Sr. Teixeira garanteed me that even without much, the house was still up and running. he has taken care of it and to him it looks beautiful. with a lot of love and care he reasured me his kids would run around like my daddy once did.
i didn't have the courage anymore to tell him i wanted to buy the house, i thanked him, asked for a photo to give to my grandmother and i left on my voyage knowing that that doll house will always be in good hands.
Boane, (which by the way A.T. has already chosen as the second name for his first boy child... sometimes i hope it's not with me :/) is a little village right next to Umbelúzi where my dad was baptized in the chapel you see in the picture, it's very very cute. but all it had was the chapel!

Namaacha, for those who are thinking of going to Mozambique is a waterfall location, that is if you go in the african summer, known as the wet season... because we didn't see any water falling from the hills, we only saw all the swazi children trying to get money from us by diving into, what didn't seem so clean water, and showing how uninhibited they are. we didn't give money but they loved how we kept taking pictures. i'll go back one day just for the waterfall and maybe then i'll dive myself!

...there are also photos of a huge dam we passed on our way back to Maputo, i can't remeber the name, but i'll remember how i had to duck beside a wall when the wind picked up and tried to take my skirt and eyeglasses out of my body...

to be continued