Livraria

Bookshop.

It was an exciting day as Ilídio and I went to the bookshop at the start of my lesson to buy Gramática Ativa Nível (Level) 2, which starts by plunging into subjunctive verbs. In Spanish and French my learning always stopped before reaching this point, so let’s see whether I can master them in Portuguese. I think Gramática Ativa Nível 2 had also caught the attention of this passerby, gawping into the window.

As we’d had a wild visit to the bookshop, we bucked our usual trend and sat in Tunduru gardens for the lesson, which was refreshing and the number of young namorados (lovers) lolling there gave us conversation starters. Ilídio was absent for around one third of the lesson as he’d taken some sort of green tea formula which hadn’t necessarily been received well by his gut.

A few videos are doing the rounds on WhatsApp of Angolan and Mozambican students in Wuhan, protesting that they feel abandoned by their governments. Whilst I imagine it could be scary, I don’t really know what they expect their respective authorities to do given the chronic lack of resources and the continual sense of abandonment citizens of these countries complain about on a daily basis. Coronavirus won’t cause a tree of dollar notes and repatriation air tickets to sprout outside the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Maputo, but it will cause other dramatic messages claiming that Mozambique has recorded its first cases and that people are advised to buy as much food as possible in case shops shut their doors. I prefer to not panic until there’s a confirmed reason to, and I might then resort to wearing a face mask as I pass the business travellers filing out of the Chinese SOGECOA Apart Hotel around the corner from where I live.