AMIZAVA

Hello! Sorry for the long delay… I’ve been too busy having a great time in good ol’Moz.

August 30-31 was AMIZAVA 2014 (Amigos de Zavala or Friends of Zavala) which is the local festival to celebrate the Timbila—local instrument made from an endangered tree, Mwenge, and dried masala fruit shells as resonators—a type of xylophone. The Timbila tradition was declared an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO in 2005. Traditionally  a Timbila orchestra had 55 musicians and 25 dancers but due to poverty in the 1930s and then the civil war (1977-1992) the culture itself is also endangered.

During the festival we watched the traditional dancing and listened to the Timbila with a beautiful backdrop of the two lagoons and the ocean. There were also lots of booths selling different products and foods. The Peace Corp group gave away Mosquito Nets and were selling hammocks, head bands and nuts. The JICA group (Japanese International Cooperation Agency or Japanese Peace Corp as I call it) sold delicious ginger chicken, T-Shirts (so awesome!) and had lots of information for the festival goers. I used part of their space to show some information on my program but I also wanted to check out the festival so I ducked out early.

The Friday night of the festival JICA and Peace Corp (PC) had a party at our local JICA members house, Hide, the German group Freiwilligenarbeit and the Canadian group (just me) attended too. I helped cook the chicken and the rice (lots of rolar-ing the coconuts for the rice) with our Mozambican friends who were doing the cooking. We made Xiguinha (coconut water, cabbage, ground peanut and potatoe), Xima (corn (maize) meal but not cornmeal like in North America mixed with water, boiled and then stirred so that air fluffs it up), coconut rice, normal grilled chicken and chicken that was boiled in a special sauce and served with the sauce after grilling it (but I forget the name), salad and the cake. I made one cake called Bolo de Bolacha (Cookie Cake- a Portuguese thing) and the local PC guys made Banana Bread.  We made everything over the carvão which is a coal stove so it takes awhile to do anything.

My Cake and Maezinha or Mama Sonia

After listening to the Timbila and napping on Saturday we all went out to celebrate and I was joined by a friend, Alex, I had met in Tofo (beautiful beach town- worth a google image search) the weekend before with Theresa (Freiwilligenarbeit) and Alden (PC). He spun fire and impressed all the little Mozambican kids. It was a fun night!

Tofinho Beach (next to Tofo)

On Sunday we were in need of some chill time so after a quiet morning of Alex trying to pack all his stuff into two bags instead of four, we went over to my Mozambican friend Isa’s house and had two chicken lunches so we could try different cooking styles. During this lunch conversation Isa told us her sister was sick and since Alex is a Traditional medicine (for lack of a better term) practitioner he offered to go see her the next day.

On Monday after work we headed down to the lagoon where Isa has another house that her sister is staying at. I went to help translate for Alex as he is only travelling through here and does not speak Portuguese. After a thorough history and quick physical assessment by me and then translated to Alex, I mentioned I thought it may be Parkinson’s or Parkinson’s like, he performed a smudging ceremony and then gave her a few different herbs and such to make tea out of it. I explained it all and asked to see what medications she was on so we could look up if they are compatible with the herbs (if possible) and it turns out she was on Parkinson medication already and best to our googling abilities it was compatible with the random roots and wild garlic she was given. I promised to come back and do some physio exercises with her in the next week.

Smudging Ceremony

Alex continued on his grand travel journey back to Tofo and then onward to Zambia. I worked all week and then...

More to come soon on the next post!