I thought it would be good to talk a little about day to day life here in Maputo. Although with the dog just arriving and Coronavirus restrictions relaxing things are changing quite a bit at the moment.
We live here in Maputo in a Condominium. That’s basically a small housing estate with a guard. There are a lot of empty houses at the moment as many people were leaving as we were arriving. But there are some people here and we’ve made some great friends.
So back to day to day life here. On weekdays the girls have online school, I work in my business and Zoe goes to work. Zoe varies and is sometimes at home, sometimes in Maputo and sometimes at the sugar plantation which is an hour and a half away.
Apart from a couple of months over winter (UK summer), we manage to have breakfast outside. Zoe and I usually manage to have some of the amazing local fruit, while the kids are somewhat keener on the imported and very sweet cereal from South Africa.
The online school starts at 7:40 so we need to get going quite early in the morning, although, the commute to online school is pretty short. Laura and Manuel work Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Between them, they look after the house, garden and pool. It means we are supporting two local families here and get some great help keeping up with all of the work around the place. Laura is good at English but is also great at helping the kids with their Portuguese. Mainly by saying some things to them only in Portugues and refusing to say it in English. I don’t think we’ve ever had such a clean and tidy house and garden.
Lunch is normally something simple, again in the garden. If it’s sunny the kids and I usually manage to have a quick dip in the pool. It’s not heated so over winter we didn’t really use it. The weather was never very cold, but not warm enough to get in an unheated pool.
The girls are then back to online school for a couple of hours while I get a bit more work done. Even here and with COVID restrictions we’ve managed to find things for the kids to do after school. If they don’t have anything booked they tend to play with the neighbours. We’ve set up some astroturf on the flat roof over the garage and the kids have been enjoying introducing hockey to Mozambique.
A couple of evenings a week Harriett and Imogen go horse riding. This is about half an hour away out of the city. They have really been enjoying this and its far more relaxed than the atmosphere we’ve found at British riding stables we’ve visited. The girls have also found its easier to learn to ride when you’re not encumbered with thick coats, gloves and fleeces as well as the usual horse equipment that’s required. So just like back in the UK I’m busy taking kids to clubs after school.
We also have a Portuguese teacher who comes once a week after school. He does an hours lesson for me and an hours lesson for our girls and the neighbours all together, They have a great time playing games and learning Portuguese. It’s so nice for them to have an actual face to face lesson. I am pretty much the dunce in the family at learning Portuguese. The girls had a headstart knowing Spanish and Zoe picks up languages in no time and can have long conversations and work meetings in Portuguese. I’m still being baffled by masculine, feminine, grammar tenses. Pretty much the lot. It doesn’t help that whenever I try and speak Portuguese I get three other people correcting (sorry helping) me!
After school, we also use the time to go to the supermarket, do other shopping head to cafes and things like that.
At weekends we have a lot of choice of things to do and tend to move around a lot. If we stay in Maputo Zoe and I often get out for a good road bike ride and we usually go to one of the local restaurants. If you look at our other blogs you can see the many places we can easily get to in a weekend such as Ponta D’Ouro. At the sugar estate where Zoe works there is a bungalow we can use so we sometimes head there. It’s nice to get somewhere more rural. I’m still getting used to living in a city. At the bungalow, there is loads of open space for games like badminton and you can get on your mountain bike and head around the cane fields. As its, a big grid and the house and factory are on top of an escarpment, its always easy to find your way home. It’s also then only half an hour or so of off-road driving to the stunning and pretty much deserted beach.
We’re all getting used to life here and with COVID restrictions changing life here is changing. The Condominium is starting to fill up again, the city beach is now open but much still remains closed.
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