Engarrafamento

Traffic jam. Paulo and I in his txopela hit a lot of traffic as I left the office today. Choked up roads are almost negligible here compared to other capital cities, yet they took me by surprise. It took at least five minutes more than normal to reach home. This paragraph is purely so I can use the exciting Portuguese word for traffic jam as the blip title.

I woke up ensconced in a sleeping bag under my duvet after having grabbed the extra aid as I drifted off. That’s a first for Maputo especially during the summer. Some tropical storms in the Indian Ocean seem to be affecting play. Also affecting play is what the chronically bad and corrupt South African electricity network calls ‘load shedding’, to ensure availability of supply for all. This is otherwise known as rolling blackouts and these didn’t help when I was on the blower to a project collaborator discussing elephant poaching and dealing with 15 second delays and frequent cut-offs.

I am spending a lot of time thinking about politics and was amused by a Facebook post from a very left-wing Australian. She was querying why her internet algorithms were showing her Conservative Party ads when she was online watching that touching clip of Bread and Roses from the film Pride. Miners’ strikes, South Wales, gay men, lesbians or solidarity are not usually associated with diehard Tories. Google, you’ve got it wrong this time.

This is the imposing Rádio Moçambique building, close to where I live.