Blacked out, off line and out of touch. Electricity and internet back, still waiting on the phone.

If you are one of the many visitors from Canada, the US, UK, South Africa or Australia or myriad of other countries who has visited my blog in the last few days you might have wondered why I haven't updated my blog since Sunday. Well the reason is simple, Tuesday around 1:30 PM a rain storm descended upon Iracambi with thunder and lighting and when it was over some 45 minutes later we were without power and internet and later in the evening when the battery had died out telephone as well. As you might guess this made it just a bit hard to update my blog and hence the 3 day hiatus.

To be honest I don't have much to share other than that we now have internet and electricity the two necessary components that when added to my laptop make this entry possible. Our telephone is a different story as it is a "rural cellular" and the receiver is located on a hillside above us. Yes, any of us could walk up there to reset the switch and get it back on but that would be too easy. So, why haven't we? Well, it is simple the key to open up the receiver is with one of the people who works for the "fazenda" (farm) and as far as I know he has yet to bring the key by so that we can open the box, flip the switch and get our phone back. In fact I spent over three hours this morning going around the property to get to a phone that worked, call the internet and telephone people, find the guy, Joao, with the key and try and get us back online. Tomorrow or over this weekend you can look forward to pics I took on Tuesday of the river below our kitchen running very high/flooding after the rain that took out our communication tools. With pics that compare how it looks today and how it looked after the rain you will see that the river after the rain really was overflowing, fast and muddy. Gotta run as I am off to cook dinner with Gustavo.

The wonders of the internet…

How do I spend my free time you ask? Well as I don’t have my own car so I sometimes ask for a ride to run errands but really going out on my own is tough even with an international driver’s license seeing as how South Africans drive on the wrong side (j/k) of the road you know the left side and I have to get used to driving on that side of the road. Well you say but Blake “You lived in Mozambique for over 2 ½ years and they like South African drive on the left side of the road so why can’t you?” To which I have to answer I was never the driver in Mozambique as Peace Corps didn’t allow it and even when I was there outside of Peace Corps the only thing I usually wanted to do was act like an ostrich while driving so as not to see the wild driving that often occurred by the chapa/mini-bus/taxi drivers I road with, not Annie and Charles of course, or the other drivers on the road. It really is different not taking any public transport here and being driven around by Linzi, Douglas, Jared or Ben. I am doing my best to keep my eyes open while we are going around to learn where shops, offices and other places are located to hopefully get up the courage one day to be the driver. I think my using public transport in Mozambique the great majority of the time kept me from hearing drivers in their own cars from commenting on the terrible driving by the chapa/mini-bus/taxi drivers or maybe these drivers in Mozambique weren’t nearly as bad as the reputation that they have here.

Enough for now about drivers and driving and on to the title of this blog entry which you were probably beginning to think was written and then forgotten about. No worries I did want to tell you one more reason why I think the internet is amazing (I have a long list of reasons I think it or its use rather by certain individuals, organizations or governments is terrible). I spent about two hours this past weekend on Saturday or Sunday night fixated on Google’s satellite maps at http://maps.google.com/maps. I spent some time finding my parent’s home in Portland, the ETC offices/my room here in South Africa but the majority of my time was spent locating Chókwè, Lionde, Conhane, Xai-Xai, Macia, Maputo, Matola, Boane and other locations in Mozambique. It was fascinating getting a birds eye satellite view of the country where I spent 30 plus months living, working and traveling. I was amazed at how close I could get to my houses in Chókwè (one for Peace Corps and the other for The World Through My Eyes), Escóla Agrária (the agrarian school) where I taught, the home in Boane where I had my home stay during training and much more. I will not bore you with all the details although I am sure that Tober, Aimee, Nanosh, John, Orlando, Rebecca, Jimmy, Nimi and others can relate to finding a lot of enjoyment in something like this especially in a place where so much time, sweat and patience was expended.