Impetuous Translations

The Wedding Palace

By the time I got around to leaving the house this morning to run errands, the wedding palace was in full swing. I knew this because, as I walked downtown from my house, battered cars covered in crepe paper, followed by rented vans and city buses crammed to their limit with people in their Sunday-bests streamed toward me on their way to the beach to celebrate. 

Upon arriving in Maputo, the wedding palace on the main drag was quite a discovery.  The wedding palace is a rather simple white building. The first entrance way to it though is anything but. Five or so palatial stairs lead up to an open porch flanked with brilliant white columns and double-wide doors. The wooden pews can barely be seen through half of the population in Maputo that crowd the entrance.  Inevitably, there is a beautiful beaming bride wearing more white tafetta than I ever thought existed in Mozambique standing outside.  Next to her is the nervous, somewhat uncomfortable looking groom who has the same look on his face as the deer-like-thing I almost hit last month in Kruger National Park. Within the span of a fifteen minute window pre-assigned by the owners of the wedding palace, the couple has been married.   

If the view from the main drag of this happy couple's ceremony is not impressive enough, you can make a right onto the side street, turn again to face the wedding palace, and see... exactly the same thing.  Thanks to sound architectural planning, the second entrance houses the same columns, equally large doors, and during wedding-palace hours, another happy/stunned couple surrounded by every other remaining Mozambican and all the white tafetta that was available in Southern Africa. Within fiften minutes, they too will be on their way to matrimonial bliss.

Even a cynic like me wants to stop and say "parabens" to the happy couples.

Propensities

Ever since I arrived in Mozambique, I've noticed something that seems unique to this country as compared to all other African countries where I've worked. This can be succinctly stated as a propensity by the population for peeing in public places.

Perhaps as demonstrative of this fact, the drive to and from work almost always includes a few to several men, and occasionally a woman or two, with their backs to the road and hips leaning expectantly toward a wall or a tree.  While the causative factor of outdoor peeing is clearly the lack of accessible public restrooms in Mozambique, the benefits of having a virtual bathroom everywhere might also be considered a luxury of sorts. For those of us who have stood, legs-crossed, in line at concerts, sporting events, even malls, societal norms that endorse public peeing would be welcome.

I bring the issue up today, in particular, because as I rushed to an 8 a.m. meeting (a half hour later than planned because my alarm didn't go off), I happened upon the first man peeing. Rather than being focused on the job at hand, though, he seemed to be distracted by the lovely purple bougainvillea into which he was halfway ensconced. With his free hand, he appeared to be closely examining one of the flowers within reach. As I passed, I could see him leaning in, this time nose-first, to catch the flower's smell.

The mental picture of that transaction has reminded me, cliché as it may sound, that I need to set a little more time aside to stop and smell the flowers despite the never-ending pressures of work.  Though I'm unlikely to use this resolution as an opportunity to get close to that particular bougainvillea bush, I think I will stop to buy some white calla lilies from the vendors on the corner of Mao Tse Tung and Julius Nyeres on the way to my afternoon meeting.  The lilies are my favorite and available only for a few months a year; and after today, I'll appreciate the frivolous act of stopping to purchase them even more.

Everyday adventures

Yesterday morning I answered my new cell phone, largely because I was feeling adventurous.  The cell phone display offered only the word "caller" in the place that usually identifies the caller's name. 

In my world where English is not the first or only language, answering the phone without knowing either the caller's identification or the expected language of the caller requires a minimal but identifiable sense of adventure. Last week, I nearly committed to meet someone for a business lunch before I realized that the Portuguese-speaking caller, also listed as "caller" on my phone screen, had simply misdialed and mistook me for someone else.  This transaction has subsequently left me skittish of saying "Ola" to any unknown "caller". 

Turns out that the adventure of answering the phone yesterday morning, though, was minimal relative to the adventures encountered during the rest of the day with the identify-obscured caller (a friend with an impulse to head toward the beach).  Lessons learned during the remaining day's adventures to and from Jay's Beach were that:

1. palm fronds are a great way to provide traction in deep muddy ruts in which the car is otherwise completely stuck.
2. palm fronds are of no use whatsoever to a ferry boat stuck in port whose starter motor has grown tired of starting.

Arriving at home eight hours later than anticipated, I can finally say: may the everyday adventures of living in Mozambique continue to move me.  At least I'm not stuck in a rut.