The incident...

Sunday morning, a little hazy from Saturday, we went for a walk with Hannah, another volunteer consultant on Tom's project. While walking past this crumbling colonial building in the older part of the city we got stopped by a few police officers asking to see our papers. It is illegal to walk around town without a certified copy of your passport and visa. Well, I arrived on Friday afternoon and the U.S. Embassy was closed until Monday. I did not have my papers nor do I like to walk around with my passport. I had my Louisiana driver's license.

Hannah continued with her walk and Tom and I tried to talk to the officer, whose knowledge of English was fluent compared to our knowledge of Portugese. He told me I would need to spend 24-hours at the police station, and my voice cracked and tears welled up as I pleaded with him to just take us to the hotel where I could show him my passport and visa. He then tried to extort an unreasonable sum of money from us when a Mozambiquian journalist walked by and asked if everything was OK in perfect English. We were obviously distressed, and he really saved the day.

Because Tom and I are married, and he had working papers, I did not have to go to the police station nor did we have to pay any money. My LA license came in handy as it proved that Tom and I are married, with the same last name. Phew!~ The incident ended with the officer asking us to "Go in peace." We did, happily, and I promised that first thing Monday morning I would go get my papers.

At this point, I never leave home without them.

After a few hours I was calm and very happy not to be in jail. We went for a walk in the French part of the city, as the train station, located near the Franco-Mozambiquan cultural center, was designed by Monsieur Eiffel. Yes, THE Monsieur Eiffel. I am off to explore the cultural center today, after a long walk in the city this morning.

Tom's work is going quite well, despite initial confusion regarding the direction of the project. Turns out it's much more ambitious than originally planned, and a great experience for him. He's going to spend about 10 days in the field, and because the cost of the apartment is much lower than the hotel - it is not a problem for us to keep the apartment and I can even go into the field as well. This is good news, as you have to see the provincial cities and villages to really understand the entire country.

We move into the apt. on June 20. We head to the World Cup from the 23-26 June. We go to the field on the 28th, I think. Details yet to come...

Internet at the hotel is not ideal, but we'll have a connection and greater access to skype from the apartment. ~xo~