Update from Todd

From an email I got today from Todd:

I spent my day on the wild streets of Nampula.  The roads are full of bicycles, motorcycles, Land Rovers, 4-wheel drives, luxury cars even here and more people out and about than I’ve seen except the French Quarter. It has that sort of feel, but very AFRICA. Open cargo trucks are piled 12 high and have five workers sitting on top of it going down the middle of the road at 50 mph. Then, we went to an open market and bought vegetables. They had everything from teeny tiny red VERY HOT peppers….don’t ask, so HOT it made my lips numb…you know I can’t back down… to potatoes and papaya, coconuts to cabbage, and cilantro to chickens….live or dead was the same price because it was the same chicken….They had oranges and green lemons and carrots and braided rolls of tobacco. So cool and I have pics to prove it.  All over town in peoples yards are coconut bearing palms 75 feet tall, papaya trees loaded with fruit on the side of the road, wild banana trees just growing in an overgrown lot and the most brilliantly colored flowers.

Janice fixed an awesome chicken and potato recipe from Zambezie with rice, bread from the Indian bakery next door, fresh cucumber, tomato, and onion salad and fresh pineapple for dessert. The chicken and sauce on rice reminded me of jambalaya. GOOD stuff.

We went to a back alley post office and a grains/flour/corn meal store where you buy it off the pallet 25KGs at a time. That little store was packed with people of every socio-economic group. We went to the SIL compound and met some folks, drove down red sand roads that were still in city limits, saw thatched roofed homes with mud and brick mortar and more small roadside stands than you can imagine... all in the city limits. We saw granite rock outcroppings 300ft tall and termite mounds 10 ft tall and boys on bicycles so loaded with grain sacks full of charcoal on the back of the bikes it looked like it would take a small pick-up to carry it all.