home from the hill

If my memory is not failing, the post title hails from a famous literary epitaph--but my memory is likely fogged over from the humidity, as are my glasses.
We made it back this evening from our long but brief trip to beautiful Nampula.  It was a great, inspiring, and productive trip to that beautiful little city--about which Debbie will write soon.  I am left to post some pictures of the journey.  As usual, she will speak of substance and the fluff is left to me.

Large Portugese colonial period catholic church in Nampula.

 

Carmen Miranda she is not--but I did think it was nice color coordinating of her outfit with her butfrn.

 We had a spare hour or two in the morning and went to the local cultural museum which was fascinating. It was interesting to see that many of the local historical artifacts and even current "bush" tools mirrored things with which we are acquainted in Alaska native culture. They have fish-traps that could be found a hundred years ago on the yukon river--and canoes and baskets made of a birch-bark relative that look ever so much like Athebaskan work with which I am familiar. And of course, reed and grass baskets are much the same the world over. I guess that when you have a culture that is interested in the most efficient functionality of an object, the engineering among different cultures generally leads to very similar design conclusions. Sorry they wouldnt let us take any pictures in the museum.

Both of these pictures are of vehicularly framed children as we walked through some back roads of the city.

On the road back today, when we saw interesting or desireable items for sale on the roadside we would stop and investigate, barter, and buy. Among our purchases were three pineapples (the first of the season), a kilo of mangoes (similarly the first ripe ones of the season), some delicious bread--but we passed on the ginuea fowl above.

While on a stretch-your-legs stop, Debbie befriended most of the local population.

 Simply scenery

It only looks like I am holding forth and pontificating to the young missionaries (Elders Gee and Brogan) as we take a roadside stop. Though it may well be that in driving 15 hours with us, that they grew mightily weary of our stories (some undoubtedly repeated) and old-fogey music on my ipod.

I note that there has been a significant uptick in readership over the last few days--something in the news must have spurred interest in Mozambican scenery.