Sun, sand, surf and immigration...

A view over the city from our language school

This week has already been significant for lots of reasons. Firstly, we finally managed to get all our paperwork together and apply for a DIRE (Documento de Identificação de um Residente Estrangeiro) each. This is basically a residence permit for foreigners, and involved us traipsing up to the local immigration office with Pastor Moises yesterday to get this important job done. We were fearing the worst as these things can be a little tricky, but the whole process only took three hours (that’s really not at all bad) and was all very professional. The most amusing part involved trying to keep a screaming Naomi’s index fingers still for long enough for her fingerprints to be scanned!

This Friday we have our first little language test: just two and quarter hours of speaking, reading, listening, grammar and writing… Terrific! But, before we dive headlong into last ditch, late-night cramming sessions, Christine has the very important job of helping Dona Louisa make a trial-run birthday cake for two of her children, Bilão and Raulinho, who were 3 and 1 this week. This needs to go well because on Saturday our garage is going to be transformed into children’s party central…

Fishermen unloading fish and prawns at Macuti

And there’s more! These things pale into insignificance compared with Geoff having his first Mozambican haircut. He had toyed with the idea of embracing the beach-lifestyle scenery and adopting surfer-dude style golden curls but he couldn’t cope with the constant mocking from his wife. The verdict? A little on the severe side, but really not that bad!