One more reason I hate SAA

Puta que pariu, ninguém merece!!!

Stupid South African Airways is on strike and has cancelled nearly all domestic and international flights going in and out of Johannesburg, their hub. Ricardo is leaving Brazil today on a SAA flight and is supposed to arrive in Jo'burg tomorrow morning, with an afternoon connection, also on SAA, to Maputo. Now it looks like he may be delayed several days due to the strike...SAA's workers want higher wages since the company just declared fat profits this quarter. Management is not negotiating. The flight crews have stopped even showing up at the airport. No end in sight...Sigh.

I have already rented a car to drive to Beira and pick up Ricardo tomorrow evening. Now I'm not even sure he'll make it out of South Africa before the weekend. What a lovely way to add insult to injury after the *insane* month I've had here in his absence...

In other, better news, Agrolink is not being audited after all. This news came through the grapevine and was an excellent illustration of how facts are easily distorted when transmited from mouth to mouth over a cellhpone. Our accoutant called the company's ex-secretary who called BL who called me. BL and I both understood that there would be an audit. Apparently, the accountant was just concered that we have our books in order should someone from the finance ministry decide to drop in on Agrolink. I still think he was setting us up, trying to get a little something extra out of us to prevent the possibility of an audit. Everyone is interconnected here...the accountant could very well call the finance ministry and "request" a visit to Agrolink.

My weekend trip to Espungabera and Zimbabwe was fabulous. In comparison to my last trip, the drive was tranquilo. Stefano's driver picked me up at 5am on Friday and we bumped along the dirt road at a reasonable speed, slowing down on curves and taking care not to spin out. Espungabera is a little, little town in the mountains that has no paved roads, one restaurant, and phone service via radio waves. Totally isolated. It was great to hole up in Stefano's project headquarters and finally get some good work done on my proposal. No noise. No flatmates. Just me and my laptop and the occasional brainstorming session with Stefano.

Saturday I woke up again at the crack of dawn and got ready for the meeting with our tea client in Zimbabwe. It went amazingly well, and we were able to negotiate all the necessary details for our future joint venture and the proposal I'm currently putting together. We had lunch with the client and his family in their beautiful estate hidden in the middle of a tea plantation. We had fresh fish and bread pudding, gin and tonics after the negotiations, and lounged about in the most extravagant house I've seen since setting foot in Africa. Swimming pool and manicured gardens and sweeping verandahs - the whole works. The client and his family are very worried, though, that any day Mugabe could swoop down and expropriate not only their tea plantation and factory, but the family's home as well. Yet another reason they are interested in doing business in Mozambique - it provides an emergency exit out of Zimabwe if necessary.

So now my task is to sit down and finish the proposal. Happily, the details and overall concept of the project have finally come together in my head, and I have a clear image from which to write. I did some simple cash flow projections and budget work yesterday, and my goal is to get a draft completed before Ricardo arrives. I have a lot of work ahead of me, but I'm much less stressed out because I finally understand what the project is all about.

Our trip back to Chimoio was uneventful, except for the fact that we left at 5am and gave a lift to two of Espungabera's district administrators that hadn't bathed in a couple of days. I had to crack the window and stick my nose out into the cold dawn air as not to pass out from the ripe odor inside the 4x4. A car full of smelly men was nothing, however, compared to my last trip back from the mountains.

When BL, Gemelli and I went two weeks ago, we decided to drive back through the Zimbabwean side of the border. Even through the trip is an extra 200 km, nearly all of the roads are paved and you can make it back to Chimoio in about the same time as on the dirt trails through the interior of Mozambique. Obviously this doesn't hold true if you take a wrong turn and drive for 1.5 hours in the wrong direction. Somehow we missed the turnoff for Birkenough Bridge and ended up driving through the semi-arid savannah full of baobab trees. We were so fascinated by the huge trees - enormous, leafless beings that dominate the landscape like fat sentinels - that we didn't even notice we were off track. After finally correcting our mistake and getting on the proper highway, we got lost again in Mutare, the border town with Mozambique. It was dark, and there were no signs indicating where to go. All the street lights were burnt out, and packs of people roamed the streets, staring at the white strangers cruising around in circles. We finally asked a man on a bicycle how to get to the border and he sent us on a totally deserted road, past a looted gas station, into a thicket of trees. We were convinced it was a setup when finally I spotted a faded sign for Beira, the port in Mozambique over 300km away. Thank God. We zoomed through customs and drove the rest of the way home to Chimoio telling jokes to keep awake.

Well, it's time for me to get to work...My deadline for a draft is the 1st and the final proposal has to be mailed out on the 8th. Long days ahead, for sure.