Welcome to Lichinga: Where it takes one hour to cook a chicken

Hey everyone,

well, I touched down in Lichinga (3 flights in 4 hours from Maputo ... the first one at 6:30am) yesterday.

Lichinga is approaching the STICKS of Africa (though I'm actually going to the Wilderness tomorrow). It's not really a town, the main centre of town (as one of the guys here explained) is this big roundabout next to an unused cinema. There's one road that's tarred (confusingly called the tarmac) and the rest is dirt roads.

That being said, it has a really nice feel about it, and feels very safe.

A few random things I have noticed about Lichinga ...

1. It takes FOREVER to get food here. I waited well over an hour yesterday for chicken and chips - I felt the combined frustration of (i) being hungry (never enjoyable for me!) and (ii) trying to tell the waiter off for taking so long with my order without being able to speak Portugeuse. Yes, trying to be angry in a foreign language is an interesting experience (I didn't know what else to do but look annoyed, wave my finger, and shout over and over again, "chicken!" ...

2. The rain here is BIZARRE. It comes and goes - an amazing phenomenon where it pours for 20 minutes then is fine (I guess it's not that dissimilar to Melbourne, really). Today was even weirder: I was sitting in a hut having lunch and it was pouring down 10 metres away from us, but not over us, and yet, pouring 30 metres away from us on the other side.

3. There are disused 70-seated planes lying around in random places. I have no idea why, but it's not a great advertisement for aviation.

4. There are missionaries everywhere. Have been to dinner parties these last two nights - both with lots of them! Some of them are Aussies! (they say hi ... there's one from the SHIRE here for all you southies!)

5. The telephone line has a special surprise. When you are talking on the telephone (land line), you can hear LOUD AND CLEAR Radio Mozambique, which is extraordinarily annoying if you're trying to have a proper conversation ...

6. And as a result, the internet connection here is s-l-o-w. I connected at 2.4 kbps (that's much less than one KILOBYTE per second) ... yuk. My internet. Why?!? (since then, I've gotten faster ... even speeds of up to 4.8 kbps!?!?!)

7. There's not much to do here. When we got in, there weren't many of us on the plane, but hundreds of people waiting for us at the airport. "Don't worry about them," the local told me. "There's not much to do here ... so they come and watch the planes land every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday."!


... but the sunsets are gorgeous, and the people are nice (except that waiter, but I showed him .. well, tried to).



Blessings,
john