Sparrow

A group of colleagues from Mozambique has arrived in Dar es Salaam, ready for a workshop in the coming week. This is an exciting point in our transboundary initiative as before now it’s been hard to implement jointly or have resources to do so. I see it as a positive milestone resulting from graft over the last year.

I took the Mozambicans to Coco Beach to give them a flavour of Dar es Salaam. Mbumba, one of the group, described the food vendors as maningue agressivo, maningue being a Mozambican slang term for ‘very’. He had a good point; they badgered us somewhat to frequent their stall and then were less than attentive once they’d snared us.

Before this, I’d been battling with a persistent sparrow that kept flying into my room from inside the air conditioning unit. Every time I got it out of the window, it would return as if there was a conveyor belt of sparrows inside the machine. I think it had found a gap in the exterior to squeeze through, as if it was a fun game. I was concerned that when I went out I would return to a dying sparrow on the floor, but luckily the aircon conveyor belt game must have ended.