Myles Away From Home

I have been able to post some photos. I labelled them as best I could, considering I could not see the photos once uploaded! Here is a link to a random one (I have no idea which one it actually is) - hope it's a nice one! Click on it and follow the link to see them all.

Today (June 25th, as I will be posting this later) marks the 34th anniversary of Mozambique’s independence. This is when the country gained independence from its Portugual. It is a national holiday, as Canada Day is at home. There was a small parade this morning in Nampula. It looked to be only school children. We decided to take the day off like everyone else seeing as everything was closed and we wouldn’t be able to get much done anyway. That, coupled with the fact that the internet has been down for 2 days means there’s a lot that could not get done today anyway.

After spending the weekend in Maputo, I flew up to Nampula, which is in the North of Mozambique. It is a city of approximately 300-400,000 people, with a small commercial centre. According to one of the women I am traveling with it has changed a great deal since 1995 when she was last here. It is a bustling little city now. It is warmer here than it was in Maputo, as we are closer to the equator. During the day it is hot, while at night a nice cool breeze blows. It reminds me of Ottawa in July. It’s the dry season now, so we should get much rain while I am here.

I arrived in Maputo, Mozambique on Saturday morning. It is finally sinking in, now that I have stopped zooming from here to there in an airplane non-stop, that I am in Africa again. It’s great to be back! Maputo is the capital of Mozambique and is a pretty big city. It is located on the coast in the south of the country. I am staying in a small guest house / B&B until we head up to Nampula on Monday morning.

I will be very happy, once I am in Nampula on Monday, not to see an airport for a while. I am currently in Johannesburg, South Africa, where I am staying for two nights on my way to Mozambique. I flew via Toronto and Amsterdam yesterday to arrive here around 9pm at night. Unfortunately my checked bag did not make it on the same flight from Amsterdam. Otherwise, the flights were uneventful and I was happy to have a bed last night, even though it wasn’t for very long (6 hours by the time I got to the hotel).

Dave and I just got back from a quick trip to PEI to visit some of his family out there. It was a lovely weekend, all in all. We decided back in the winter that we should go out to visit, since only a few of Dave’s relatives from out East were able to make it to the wedding and to see Dave’s grandparents who are in a nursing home in Charlottetown. We bought the flight on aeroplan points, which is a great way to travel!

We left Fri at around lunch time, and arrived in Charlottetown in the early afternoon. We were met at the airport by Dave’s uncle Doug and went straight from there to the nursing home to see Dave’s grandparents. They both have Alzheimer’s, so the family had been trying to get them used to the idea of Dave and I visiting all week. They remember people they see all the time, but don’t remember others that they don’t see regularly. At times they seemed to know who Dave was, but at other times it was obvious that they didn’t.

Although not a journey overseas, as is usually the case on this blog, Dave and I did a bit of travelling this weekend. And so, I decided to write a little bit about it. We, and a group of friends, went to Niagara on the Lake this weekend to enjoy some wine and quality time together in celebration of our thirtieth birthdays, which many of us are celebrating this year (or already have!).

It’s been a long time since I have been to NOTL. In fact, the last time I don’t think I was old enough to drink (what a waste!). It was fun to rediscover the town now that I am more than old enough to imbibe! Dave, myself and friend Kim drove to Belleville on Thurs night, to shorten the drive to NOTL on Fri. After getting a fairly early start on Fri morning, we stopped in St. Catherine’s for groceries and arrived in Niagara in time for some lunch. We stayed at McPhillips House, a rental property with four bedrooms and beds for 10. Shoshanah and Thomas were already there, so after dropping off all our stuff and calling the property manager to come fix the lock (turns out the batteries of the keypad lock had died), we were off to a small tea shop to sit on the patio in the lovely weather, to enjoy an Irish beer and a bap and decide what to do with the rest of the afternoon.

I decided this trip would be a good time to stopover in the UK and catch up with some good friends who I haven’t seen in quite a while on my way home. I’ve been to Dhaka three times now and have flown BA through Heathrow each time, always with the intention to stay for the weekend on one of these trips. Well, BA is no longer flying to Dhaka after March, so I don’t know what airline or routing I will be taking next. I thought I had better do it now because I don’t know when I will have another such opportunity.

I am writing this on my second last night in Dhaka. It is the weekend here now, and so tomorrow I will work in the hotel, eat an early dinner and head to bed so that I can get up at 2am to go to the airport and catch my flight to the UK at 5:30am. I am definitely looking forward to returning home, and also to my short layover in the UK for the weekend. Dhaka is always interesting, but after a while one gets sick of the traffic, noise, bad air quality, heat and humidity, not to mention the often frustrating working conditions.

Today I, another consultant on the project and some local staff went on a field trip outside the city. It’s always nice to get out of Dhaka, and this trip proved to be quite interesting. I have posted a whole bunch of photos and a couple videos. A lot were shot out the car window though, so aren’t of the highest quality. We went to visit the area where a demonstration project is being conducted under our project. It is about an hour outside of Dhaka, but you never really seem to actually leave civilization to get there.