Live from Mozambique October 20th and 21st

Monday, October 22, 2012

Live update from Mozambique. 

This weekend we traveled about 30 miles north of Maputo where we crossed a river on a ferry to get to a beach area where there are a few beach resorts and many private homes. Once you cross over the river there are no longer paved roads and what is their consist of thick mud due to recent rains and once past that stretch nothing but paths made of soft beach sand. You absolutely could not get to this area without a four wheel drive vehicle.

We were fortunate enough that a friend of Zef's who owns some properties in this beach area let us have access to a duplex about a  quarter of a mile off the beach. It was a nice newly constructed home with a large front porch where we spent most of our time when not at the beach. The only facilities to cook on was a charcoal grill. So we had grilled chicken and baked potatoes and a nice salad for dinner on Saturday night, Cooked scrambled eggs over the charcoal grill with bread and jam and juice. 

The beach was beautiful. A steep sandy beach with small boats scattered here and there on the sand dunes. We were not to sure how they were used until Sunday when we saw them in action. They had very large nets with buoys attached every so often. The net was about six feet in height and about 300 feet long. The net was deployed by boat off the shore. Once deployed, it was pulled back in onto the shore by about 20 men. It was quite a lengthy process to watch. Once the net was completely in, the catch was quickly sorted by what appeared to me by type of fish. In the catch we observed they were all very small fish about 3 to 4 inches long. There appeared to be about 3 different kind. The majority looked like large sardines. They string these small fish thru their mouth and gill and wrap them in a circular fashion to carry, then string them on long lines between trees to dry. These small dried fish are their diet do to the remoteness and difficulties of travel, there is no way to take them to a market and very rarely is someone out there that buy these small fish. There were also several large jelly fish caught in the net, they were just thrown on the sand. It was apparent that on occasion a large fish or two are caught along with the small ones. We saw some fellows walking along the beach holding a couple of just caught large fish, about 24 to 36 inches long. I have no idea what kind of fish they were, but people will buy them to take home and cook. Judith bought about ten pounds of the small fish for five dollars (a lot of money for those fishermen) to take home and she said to use on their salads. That will be interesting to see.