The online space of Caroline Bach
I won’t be able to share my impressions from Swaziland with you yet – but I can let you see these two amazing creatures that I met in Hlane National Park. It was a truly mindblowing experience – nothing like anything I have ever experienced before. Animals look and feel completely different when they are not in captivity, when you are on their territory, and when they are the one’s setting the rules.
It’s Friday again. I’m falling in love with this city with all its cultural happenings and the many opportunities for weekend get-aways. We have to go abroad at least every 30 days to get our passports stamped and visa’s renewed, which gives us a great reason to travel a bit further away and explore. This weekend we’re going to the mysterious little Kingdom of Swaziland.
Here are some shots from last weekend and the “Arte na Rua” festival. One of my roomates was part of a contemporary dance performance, and later we saw and met with the super talented Tofo Tofo boys who are big superstars here. They are two Mozambicans got to dance together with Beyonce in one of her videos after she had found them on Youtube. Oh, the glories of the internetz!
The moon was full over Maputo a couple of days ago. I was watching it from a couch on a balcony on the 16th floor. Head back, facing the sky.
I’ve told you many great things about SoundCloud, but the best thing about it is when you find a tune like this and the artist is sharing it for free download. I instantly grabbed it and unconditionally love it. See for yourself. Here’s Ricky Eat Acid doing A Smoothie Robot for My Moon Mansion and you can download it by clicking that little arrow to the right of the player. But have a listen first and do let me know what you think about it. Now, enjoy.
Ricky Eat Acid – A Smoothie Robot for my Moon Mansion
(2012)
Good night.
Last friday I went to the premiere of “A filha do General” at Teatro Avenida here in Maputo. The play was a Mozambican interpretation of Henrik Ibsens renowned play Hedda Gabler from 1890. It was performed by the theatre group Mutumbela Gogo and directed by the Swedish writer and director Henning Mankell.
Mankell and the artists have managed to combine a very interesting historical context from Mozambique with Ibsens powerful psychological drama about a dominant yet confused female character sometimes described as the “female Hamlet” – if you are near Maputo and get the opportunity to go, do so.
On Saturday I went together with Mozambican @Verdade to the outskirts of Maputo to take part in the distribution of their weekly newspaper. I had been talking to the director of the paper on twitter the day before and he asked me if I would like to come along to see what a distribution looks like, and meet the people who read the paper. So I did.
“A Verdade não tem preço!” Somebody shouted as we drove by in our little tuk-tuk.
“The truth has no price” – which is the slogan of the journal, referring both to the truth as such, and to the newspaper.
@Verdade means “The truth” and it costs nothing. It is distributed with tuk-tuks that drive around the slums and suburbs of Maputo, delivering the paper to people who reach out to grab a copy. People come running, often whistle a little tune to get your attention, get a copy, look you in the eyes and always say thank you. They want this information and they want you to know that they are appreciating it.
Old men, young women with babies, security guards, women carrying baskets with fruit on their heads, young people reaching out from the windows of cars and buses, anbody can get a copy – except the youngest one’s. It was exciting to see the scope of the kinds of people who wanted their copy of the newspaper, and I couldn’t help but wondering what the literacy rate was in the places we went – it didn’t look very promising. But whatever these people’s ability to read well actually is, @Verdade seems to be the only thing a lot of people get to read at all, and it might be their only soure of outside information.
The newspaper is written in fairly simple portuguese with a loud politically oppositional voice, a lot of participatory journalism and articles often focusing on social issues of high imporance to the development of Mozambique. I looked through the issue that we were distributing and it had a big article about how to easily protect babies from malnutrition, which is one of the biggest problems here in Mozambique. So I wouldn’t say the literacy rate is a big obstacle, because if only one person can read and tell the other’s what it’s all about, or if the schooled children get to read for their parents in the evening – it’s still great. And people who can’t read well get to really try and practice. Maybe learn.
Launched in 2008, the newspaper has a distribution of 50,000 per issue and is the most read weekly journal in Mozambique. It was very touching to see how much people actually wanted to read the news. They knew we were coming, they knew who we were, and when we were going back through an area we had already been to, you could see everybody with their heads down, reading. Or maybe at least looking at the pictures.
I met this girl in Mafalala, she is 17 years old and the name of her little son is Antonio.
In Mozambique, 56% of the girls get married before the age of 18. These marriages are a clear obstacle to the development of the society and have serious consequences for the health and well being of young girls.
I was asked whether a marriage with a much older man (which usually is the case here) couldn’t be the choice of the girl herself. Of course, in many cases it is the girl and her family who decide that the time to become married has come. The reason for this is the social and financial protection that the girl can recieve from a man when her family isn’t capable of providing her with it.
The first and most predictable problem is that the girl becomes very inferior to her husband simply because of the age difference, putting her at risk to physical, psychological and sexual abuse. The girl is taken out of school making it impossible for her to complete her education. A girl who is too young to give birth is likely to suffer from very serious complications if she does so anyway and the intercourse between an adult man and a young girl puts her at a very high risk of contracting HIV. There are many dangers and wrongs with turning girls into women before they are mature, educated and ready.
On the occasion of International Women’s Day 2012, the Swedish Embassy in Maputo has published a call to the end of early marriages in Mozambique. Please read by clicking it below, and feel free to share.
Spent four days with the diplomats who came to Mozambique as a part of their training programme. We went to Namaacha district where we visited the hospital, a primary school and a very bizarre crocodile farm. We had a couple of very interesting meetings and dinners, got to see a little part of Henning Mankell’s new play and ended with a walking tour in the Mafalala area. All in all, we had some well spent and highly intense days and the group proved that fun and ambitious go very well together. For me, it was as inspiring as spending four days with a group of very experienced and interesting individuals can get – I’m exhausted, happy and very much encouraged to try to become as awesome. Thank you, all!
Representatives from The Swedish Diplomatic Training Programme are coming to Maputo soon and we will spend the next couple of days with them. Very interesting. Here’s a little girl from Inhaca that I was hanging out with for a moment. I’ll be back online when I’m less busy, my internet at home is gone again but now at least you know that I’m still ok. haha..
