Smells Like Happy

And that's how I found the most delicious cupcake in the entire world, the end.

If you could gather together every single person in the entire world -- people from Kansas and Greenland and Kenya and Taipei and all points between -- you could easily divide them into two groups: sweets and salties.

I'm a sweet.

Always have been. When I was a latchkey kid and our house was a regular stop on the Schwann's man's delivery route, I'd sometimes eat a Schwann's ice cream drumstick as an after-school snack.

And then I'd have another.

And then I might hurry and have another before my mom came home from work.

And then I'd make an excuse for why I wasn't hungry for dinner. "Big lunch" and "tummy ache" (true, that one) were tops on my excuse list.

And then after dinner I'd have to go down to the basement freezer to retrieve drumsticks for everybody, because that is how we do weekday dessert in the Midwest, and I'd come upstairs announcing, with a bewildered expression, that the drumsticks were almost gone, because "apparently dad already ate most of them."

It's really a wonder that I wasn't an overweight child. At the same time I ask my parents whether they ever believed me, I'll have to say thanks for the good genes.

* * *

Earlier this year, our housekeeper's daughter was looking for work. She needed a job badly. M and I thought about the guy who has made a business out of stopping at U.N. agencies selling samosas ("chamussas" here), and we looked at each other and said DUDE, somebody should totally do that with cupcakes!

Because -- unless you've been living in... well, in Mozambique for the last five years -- cupcakes are hot. In fact, cupcakes are so hot that in the hottest places, they've already burned out. Cupcakes flat-out jumped the shark in New York and Chicago. There are just too damned many cupcakeries, and most of their creations look far better than they taste. But the points relevant to this story are:

1. Cupcakes can be delicious.

2. They are generally popular among Westerners.

3. A lot of the expat crowd here is made up of Westerners.

4. Nobody sells cupcakes here.

So a few cocktails, financial projections, risk assessments, and "yeah, man!"s later, we reached a decision.

We would help our housekeeper's daughter form a cupcake business catering to the expat community.

And then she would have success, and she would hire other people who need work! And then they'd have a co-op! And they'd be earning a living in a sustainable way and calling their own shots! And we'd feel like we actually did some good here!

Did I mention that we did not involve the housekeeper's daughter in this discussion?

Or that we have no idea about her temperament, work ethic, intelligence, or skills?

I'm sorry if you feel we left out some critical part of the equation, but I'd like to continue with my story.

We had a plan!

Aside from the critical questions of where to most affordably procure ingredients and how to transport the product on foot on a 95-degree day, we first had to find the perfect cupcake. Two or three perfect cupcakes, actually.

Being a sweet, I set myself on this task like a bloodhound on a thief.

I set up a test kitchen and I baked. I baked and I baked and I baked. Banana cinnamon cupcakes. Strawberry cream cheese cupcakes. Vanilla cupcakes, chocolate cupcakes, and lemon-vanilla cupcakes. I baked them all, and M and I judged them, one by one. The flavor, the moistness, the texture, the aroma, the appearance, the longevity.

We whipped up frostings. Swiss meringue buttercreams. American buttercreams. Cream cheeses. Drizzles.

We sent cupcakes to his office for judging. We researched and tasted, modified and tasted again.

We were, frankly, exhausted. We were sick of the taste of sugar on our tongues, and that, my friends, is a sentence I never thought I would type.

And then. And then.

I found it.

Hallelujah, but I found it! I found the most perfect cupcake in the world!

And then we found someone who needed a housekeeper, and we introduced her to our housekeeper's daughter, and she was hired on the spot.

And just like that, the dream was dead.

But it's for the best, you see. It's for the best because she actually wanted a housekeeper position. It's for the best because we... uh... still hadn't really... ahem... told her that she was about to become Maputo's first cupcake entrepreneur and lift dozens of women out of the cycle of poverty and into the realm of self-sufficiency.

Anyway, was it all so bad? We helped her get a job, which was the main point. And we did, after all, land on the most perfect cupcake in the world, and that's something you don't do without a whole lot of bakin', tastin', and failed-business-plan-makin'.

Unless you're you, because I'm going to tell you what it is. You may tell anyone else you choose, because a cupcake this good can't be kept down.

Nobody puts Cupcake in a corner.

Now, I want to be clear: I didn't invent this cupcake. I don't think I'm yet up to cupcake invention. But I do think I definitely improved on an already excellent cupcake.

So here's what you do: First, you swallow your pride or your jealousy or your disdain for insider trading, and you bow down to Queen Martha. Yes, she's a hundred things you'll never be, but is that any reason not to take advantage of her now and then? Bow down to her, and go fetch her recipe for One-Bowl Chocolate Cupcakes. You don't have to pay her a dime for it, or look her in the eye, or say thank you, you're very talented and thin.

Anyway, one bowl! Easy cleanup! We're already on our way to perfection.

In fact, you could stop there and probably be pretty happy. Plenty of people settle in life, because they found a job that is good enough, or a husband who is good enough, or a pair of jeans that is good enough.

But not you, not today. Because this is your chance to take the road less traveled.

Do the following:

1. Replace the all-purpose flour with cake flour. Don't ask questions, just do a one-to-one substitution, despite what you might read from those professional bakers on the Internets. (What do they know, anyway? I have eaten my way to credibility on this matter.)

2. Feel free to use regular, ol' vegetable oil instead of safflower oil. As I understand it, safflower oil is a kind of vegetable oil anyway.

3. Use buttermilk if you can, but you can instead do 1 TB white vinegar plus 1 cup full cream milk if you can't find buttermilk. (Really, no discernible difference in the end.) Just note that that amount is to get the proper ratio; you'll use only 3/4 cup.

4. Add 1 TB vanilla extract.

5. Add 2 tsp cinnamon -- or more if you like -- at the dry ingredient stage.

6. Underbake slightly. The recipe calls for 20 minutes, and I do about 16-17 (but no more) in my little Mozambican oven. This might take some experimenting in your own oven.

The result of these modifications is a dark, very chocolatey cupcake that is moist to the point of insanity. The cake flour provides a sweeter, more tender cupcake than all-purpose flour could ever dream of doing. The cinnamon gives the cupcake a slightly spicy aroma (the cinnamon just barely transfers to the taste, although you can add more to make the taste spicier if you like). The cake flour plus the slight underbaking give the cupcake an almost chewy texture, which is great for someone (like me) who finds a good brownie to be the answer to all of man's problems. It's not actually as dense as a brownie, of course; this is still a cupcake, through and through. But it's not like those crappy, crummy, crumbly cupcakes that you find at upscale cupcakeries that charge you $4 for just one of their crappy, crummy, crumbly -- but pretty -- cupcakes.

By underbaking, you won't get as much of a dome as you otherwise might. But that's OK, because we've preserved the moistness and we're now going to top the cupcake with another perfect creation: a cream cheese cinnamon frosting.

Did your knees just tremble like mine did? And I'm even sitting down.

Again, not necessarily my invention -- cream cheese frosting is cream cheese frosting -- but I modified existing recipes to this ratio of ingredients and added cinnamon to make the overall flavor a little more complex.

Teej's Take on the Perfect Cream Cheese Frosting: Cream Cheese Cinnamon Frosting

• 1 8-ounce package of low-fat cream cheese (softened)
• 1/4 cup of unsalted butter (room temperature)
• 3 cups sifted powdered (confectioner's) sugar
• Cinnamon to taste/appearance

Use a mixer to blend the cream cheese and butter until smooth. Then start sifting in the powdered sugar. Sifting is important, so don't just dump the stuff in there or you'll get hopelessly clumpy frosting. Get a sifter.

You might want to add even more powdered sugar, depending on how you like your frosting. If you want to pipe it onto your cupcakes, you'll need a lot more powdered sugar -- at least another cup, maybe another cup and a half -- to make the frosting stiffer. But that will also make it extremely sweet, and I prefer the tartness of a cream-cheesier frosting to balance out the sweet, dense cupcakes, so I stick to something between 2.5 and 3 cups.

Then start sprinkling in the cinnamon. It will put pretty little speckles in your frosting, and you should add as much as you like, according to taste or appearance. I like to put a pretty good amount in there so I can just barely taste the cinnamon coming through. Then, after I frost the cupcakes, I sprinkle more cinnamon on top for appearance, aroma, and taste.

 
She might not look like much, but she is practiced in the art of deception.

I don't make promises or general statements like this often, because we're all unique little snowflakes, etc., etc., ad nauseam. But I can safely say that if you at least sort of like chocolate cupcakes and at least sort of like cream cheese-based frosting, you will love this combination.

And if you're feeling extra adventurous and really want to up the complexity of the flavors, work a little ground ginger into the frosting and/or cupcake batter. Just go a bit at a time.

 

I'm happy to report that our housekeeper's daughter is still employed. She cares for two small children, one only a few months old. She cleans a house twice the size of ours. She cooks meals. And she does it all six days a week. To me, her job sounds like a really, really difficult job.

Did we really think that we were going to create a business, shove it off on a total stranger, and expect her to run it with enthusiasm, know-how, and success? Of course not. At the same time we were baking away, we were asking everyone we knew about employment opportunities for this girl. Still, the idea could work for somebody. But these ideas usually work best for the sort of people who think them up on their own because they'll have some big ambitions -- and hopefully a little capital -- to throw behind their ideas.

So we're content in knowing that she has the job she was looking for, and that we helped her to find it. She's making a higher wage than most people in her situation. Her mother tells me that she's very happy.

We're going to send some of our next batch of cupcakes home with Helena to share with her family. Hopefully they'll enjoy them.

Sing, choir, sing

I miss a lot of things about America. But one thing I don't miss is American cable television news channels. We have CNN International here, and I occasionally wish I could get live coverage of certain happenings in America, such as presidential addresses. But for the most part, I stay current on news and politics by reading an awful lot of material on this here Internet. And, frankly, it's an exhausting process even without seeing clips of Keith Olbermann daily crowning someone as his Worst Person in the World (daily, Keith?), or seeing clips of Glenn Beck with tears streaming down his face, contorted in a clown's grimace, as he makes viewers believe he is crying for his country. 

Sane people don't have time for bullshit. They're busy, and working or looking for jobs, and running their kids to practice and home again, and hanging out with their friends, and reading books. Sane people are weary of policy being made funny or nasty or entertaining or manipulative. In other words, sane people don't feed the machine. And that means the vocal minority that does feed the machine -- though not nearly as small a minority as I'd like -- effectively sets the agenda for what becomes our most visible news. And then two things happen: First, the news spends a disproportionate amount of airtime covering the ideas that the minority espouses, thus giving the minority viewpoint more legitimacy and steam; second, the news becomes complicit in setting the agenda for the leaders that represent that minority, and those leaders suddenly don't have the balls to inject a little sanity back into the dialog. 

This is unfortunate. There's real dissension out there, regarding budget deficits and military escalation and nuclear containment. But I'm not talking about the valid disagreements, I'm talking about the cockamamie bullshit of a vocal minority, made up mostly of the evangelical right. That minority is quickly becoming the core of an entire party in a two-party system. And these people's ideas are a confused fucking mess.

I'm not saying this as an outsider; I know lots of these people. (Thankfully, I don't have to interact with them very often.) And while I admire the President's spirit of bipartisanship, it seems pointless to kowtow to a movement that has decided to stymie anything he attempts simply because he attempts it. Reason has no place there.

Look, I know I'm preaching to the choir. I doubt I have many, if any, evangelical, "tea-partying" readers on this here blog, written as it is by a self-described liberal and atheist/agnostic (although I do hope that I have plenty of readers of various faiths). But maybe you know people like this is your life, people who scream at "tea parties" or quietly send you daily email forwards about the latest evidence that Barack Obama is a Muslim, or a socialist, or a fascist, or a communist, or a Hitlerite. Or a definition-defying mashup of all five.

It doesn't seem effective to ignore them when they have such a visible media platform. Can we perhaps better understand them, and thus figure out how to address them?

They're scared. Of a changing world, of people who aren't like them, and of their own sense of powerlessness in the face of all this change. Most -- but not all -- of the people I know who fit this description never ventured very far from the small communities in which they were raised. There's a reason that higher educational attainment is positively correlated with Democratic party identification: Education often involves greater exposure to the world; when you are exposed to more of the world, you understand it a little better than you did before; and when you understand it better, you fear it less. Currently, the Democratic party is the more open-minded of the two.

What do you do with that information? I don't know. It'll take a lot more than introducing them to your gay best friend so they can see he's not going to molest their children, or to your friend Mohammad so they can see he doesn't once shout Allah Akbar! and blow up the dinner table. Based on my own experience, you'd probably get a lot of he's okay... for one of *those*. Unless exposure to other people is repeated and diverse, each individual is likely to be reduced to an exception. 

A lot of this fear isn't going to dissipate for these people, ever, because they've misidentified what makes America America. I saw a clip of an interview outside a Sarah Palin book signing and a man said something very close to, "If we keep on this track with this president, pretty soon we'll be just another country." Can you imagine that? America a country, as opposed to... The Country? This is a real fear that multiplies like a virus, this xenophobic idea that America is exceptional for her race and religion as opposed to her ideals. They fear that China will soon be a bigger economic superpower than the U.S. -- which it will -- and we'll all be forced to speak Mandarin and throw away our forks. The Japanese were once the target of this fear, when Japan's economy boomed and we all started buying Sonys and Toyotas. India's economy may soon be booming again, so maybe the Indians will have a chance in the bad-guy seat, and curry will become Spicy Freedom Sauce. This is why this movement isn't content with America being a military superpower but also wants America to wield this power with impunity. It's a terribly misplaced sense of idealism.

What do you do with that information? I don't know, again. I've always felt that international travel or exposure to foreign nationals within the U.S. is a good way to start reversing that fear. But that's not particularly helpful for the people who live in small, whites-only towns and don't have passports.

Still, it's not just the small town where this xenophobia prevails. A friend of mine recently attended a church service with his friend -- at a church in Times Square, as in New York City -- and got a shocking surprise: The sermon that Sunday was about the evil of Catholics, who will be denied the glory of heaven.

(Alternately, I know a lot of open-minded, logical people who come from or live in small towns where a lot of people look the same. I hope that would go without saying, but I don't want to be misunderstood.)

On top of all of this, people in this movement aren't media savvy. They don't know how to tell when they're being lied to or misled. They don't know how to tell a neutral web site from an authoritative-looking site with an obscured political agenda. I became a good researcher in school, particularly in journalism school. If I hadn't gone to school and constantly been forced to present factual research to defend some idea or another, I'm not sure I'd be very media savvy, either.

Whatever you do, don't have *this* conversation with someone you'd like to reason with. If someone said this stuff to you, you'd feel like they're telling you you're dumb because you didn't go to school or you don't jet around the world every six months. And although some people are very, very dumb, some are just not exposed. Some simply haven't learned a skill, such as how to do independent research or media savviness.

Incidentally, this is what leads to the rise of someone like Sarah Palin: a sense of disempowerment. Had John McCain never plucked her from obscurity in a completely cynical and shamefully irresponsible ploy to get votes, we'd never know who she is. But now she's effectively legitimized, and an entire movement hoists her onto its shoulders as someone who's qualified for office because she's just like them. She doesn't talk about all that policy mumbo-jumbo, she just believes in good, old-fashioned God-fearing America. She didn't go to Harvard like all those jerks who think they're better than everyone else. She's just a regular gal, and she's a lot more than like us than those fancy elitists who drive German cars and drink French wine. She thinks the idea that we used to be animals swinging from trees is insulting. She makes people feel better about their position in the world rather than fear or be ashamed of their position in the world. She claims that everybody is always trying to keep her down, for one manufactured reason or another; they feel the same way about themselves.

What to do with that? I don't really know.

I also don't know what to say about the healthcare debate, except to say that it's being opposed *almost* solely for the reason that Barack Obama is its main proponent. Government runs all kinds of things just fine. We get our mail six days a week, rain or shine. Our federal legislators have some of the best healthcare in the country, thanks to a government plan. We feel immense peace of mind knowing that we can call 9-1-1 and get a police officer, fire truck, or ambulance within minutes. Besides, the plan was never to take over healthcare entirely, and what remains of the public option has been entirely stripped down. If there's ever a time to use that oft incorrectly answered question "What would Jesus do?" it's in the healthcare debate. The Jesus of the Bible would heal the sick, the end. Instead, this movement acts like its messiah is the CEO of Blue Cross Blue Shield, without understanding that this messiah will use money and influence to work in his own interests, even when they counter sick people's interests, every single time.

It's an uncertain world, and people fear uncertainty. Somehow it all boils down to that fact, but I confess that I can't work it out much further in my head or on paper before I hit a mental dead end.

It just doesn't make sense that we wouldn't want people to be able to get treatment when they or their children are sick.

It doesn't make sense that because those two ladies down the street want to marry and raise their child together, it might somehow ruin my own family inside the walls of my own home.

It doesn't make sense that we could think it's okay to violently torture humans in violation of signed treaties and human rights standards that are accepted in virtually every other democratic nation.

It doesn't make sense that thousands of parents would uproariously protest the President's "stay in school, work hard" address to students and call it "socialist brainwashing," and that entire school districts would cave and refuse to broadcast it live. 

It doesn't make sense that anyone with any sense of history *at all* could draw a toothbrush mustache on a photo of Barack Obama and actually compare him to a monster who made it national policy to murder millions and millions and millions of people. (And it didn't make sense when people did that to photos of Bush either, I should add.)

It doesn't make sense that people could profess to spread the word and teachings of Jesus but uncharitably reject universal health care, the right of people to love who they love, and the commonality of all humans, even the ones who don't believe in their god.

Can you help me to understand any of it? How do you deal with people who harbor such cockamamie, illogical ideas? I tend to gravitate toward the comfort of like-minded people who make me laugh and remind me that I'm not alone -- thank you, John Stewart -- but that certainly doesn't do anything to improve the climate.

Sing, choir, sing. I'm fresh out of ideas.

Eclectic

There's a UK reality show that plays down here called "Spa of Embarrassing Illnesses." Have you seen it? If not, are you just as mystified by the title as I am? (Which is to say, mystified enough to wonder but not mystified enough to spend time finding out.)

---

We emailed the landlord about the constant parade of blood-sucking and wood-gnawing insects through our apartment. I believe the email began like this:

Dear Landlord,

We have a problem.

He brought in a team of workers to install new screens on all of the windows and vents. And that very night, we were termite-free. More important, we were mosquito-free. We haven't slept under the net in nearly a week.

In case you were curious about the flying termites, here's the deal: They don't want to bite us or bother us, they just want to eat wood or paper. (I once found four wingless termites rolling around between the pages of a book like joyful pigs in mud.) But that doesn't mean we don't mind them. When they invade, they land on a surface and immediately shed their wings because they don't need them anymore. And then something else happens: We stumble to bed to find dozens of termite wings on our pillows and sheets, and I start crying like a three-year-old.

---

At some point in the last week, I suddenly realized that I've become decently conversational in Portuguese. It hit me a few hours after I had a couple of long, gossipy conversations with Helena that I had just had a couple of long, gossipy conversations with Helena.

---

The heat has gotten intense over the last week. Here, 86 degrees feels like what I remember 95 degrees feeling like at home. I don't know if that's because of the humidity. I suppose it may be, but I hate to admit that because then I have to stop making fun of the people who gush about the suitability of Arizona as a habitable state by saying, "No, but it's a DRY heat."

In the meantime, I've downloaded some Christmas music. I close my eyes and try to imagine snow, even though I know that if I were in snow I'd be closing my eyes and trying to imagine palm trees. Facebook photos of my friends in scarves and hats make my heart hurt for more than one reason.

---

I'm headed to the States for a visit in less than two weeks, and I couldn't be more excited about it. The journey will entail two plane rides, one of which will last nearly 17 hours.

---

POLITICAL INTERLUDE: You can make a case that Obama's decision to send more troops to Afghanistan is a bad strategy. You can make a case that it's, unfortunately, the best possible way to deal with the shit soup that his predecessor left on his table. But what you can't do credibly is stomp your feet and whine, "What ever happened to CHAAANGE?!" because this was one of his campaign platforms. 

---

Now. I know I owe you an overview of our time in Cape Town. I know. But it may need to happen in pieces, because my focus lately is that of a toddler in a toy room. Shall we start with this?

 

COME ON IN, WATER'S FINE.

Not so simple

Ali is someone I'd call a friend, despite having known her for a very short time. She lived here for a few years and recently moved to California. As Ali has said on her blog, expats get used to forming friendships quickly, even with the knowledge that people will eventually move on.

Recently on her blog, she recounted a story about her neighbor, who had just returned from a trip to this city. He was drawn here partly by the bird watching opportunities and partly by Lonely Planet's description: "With its Mediterranean-style architecture, flame-tree-lined avenues, sidewalk cafés and waterside setting, [this] is easily one of Africa's most attractive capitals." But the neighbor, when he returned, said it "is really a shithole, isn't it? We expected something nice, but the whole city is run down, there are potholes in all the roads, there's nothing interesting for tourists to see, and we couldn't even find any good food. What a waste of a day."

That prompted Ali to ask some interesting questions.

"What makes someone love this city or not? Would you recommend it as a destination for friends or family on vacation? Would you recommend it as a place to live?"

Those are complicated questions, of course. To answer the first, I'd say what makes someone love this city is an open mind, and either a very short stay or a very long stay that gets them past culture shock. Would I recommend it as a vacation spot? I'd recommend that some friends and family stop through this city for a couple of days as part of a broader tour through the region. If I were merely traveling through, I'd like to see it. And I'd probably come away with a pretty favorable opinion, unlike Ali's neighbor.

But the last question is where things get even more subjective. Living here is not something that I'm enjoying as much as I might if circumstances were a bit different. My complaints are each pretty small, but they add up. (But even that's not the whole story, so stick with me.)

We're definitely not living like kings here, which seems to surprise a lot of our American friends. Public-sector salaries are dramatically smaller than private-sector salaries, and although our rent is lower than it was in the States, it's nonetheless outrageous for what we get. Our furnished apartment is furnished with the crappiest, ugliest, most uncomfortable furniture. Our walls are probably covered in coat after coat of lead-based paint. The kitchen isn't very well stocked, appliance- or dish-wise, so making meals is more difficult. We live in a building with a night club -- which the apartment broker neglected to mention before we signed the lease -- and the noise is sometimes unbelievable. We, both of above-average height, downgraded our barely-big-enough queen-sized bed in D.C. for a double bed here. I'm a terrible sleeper to begin with, and the noise and lack of space exacerbate the problem. In the States, we generally put a lot of thought and care into the environment we live in, and then we get a lot of joy out of it. (Plus, I work at home, so home is even more important to me.) But it's not sensible for us to spend thousands of dollars refurnishing this home when we're leaving in another five or six months.

The place is porous as can be, and we constantly have mosquitoes flying around, despite closed windows and doors. Sure, malaria is far less of a risk in the city than in other provinces, but it's still a risk. Keeping ants out of food is a constant challenge. And after a big rain last week, we wound up with a swarm of flying termites inside the apartment. (Well, this is Africa -- of course we did. But that doesn't make it enjoyable.)

We spend about $200 here for groceries that would cost about $125 in the States. We pay $200 each month for 20GB of uploads/downloads, whereas we'd pay $30-$40 in the States for unlimited use. One of the guards in our building treats me with total contempt because we called him on it when he was taking advantage of us by washing our car twice as often as we said we'd pay for. Every time we go to a restaurant, we find ourselves strategizing which route to take so we'll be less likely to be stopped by the AK-47-toting police and asked for money.

People are generally not very friendly to expats, and as a result I practically fall in love with every waiter or waitress who so much as smiles at us. The language barrier is always a challenge, and I meet it with varying degrees of success. Our feelings about the place are most certainly colored by this horrible experience which confuses, angers, and saddens us still.

I'm sure you're wondering, so let's ask the question: What on earth did we expect?

Well, this. We pretty much expected this. This place is generally meeting our expectations, in ways both annoying and fulfilling.

And that's why we agreed to come here for just under a year. It's not the sort of place we'd ever want to stay long term. We look forward to getting back to a university town where there are writers and activists and policy wonks giving interesting lectures every night of the week. Where our friends are. Where we're closer to our families, whom we miss dearly. Where we can enjoy all of the fantastic infrastructure and amenities that such cities are fortunate enough to have -- infrastructure and amenities that I hope this city someday can offer its citizens.

I think a lot of people don't understand our reactions. They think my assessment means that I must regret having come here. That's not true at all. Do I count the days until we can head back? Sometimes, especially when I'm in the midst of a swarm of flying termites. Do I consider myself more of a Cape Town person? You bet. But I'm glad we took this opportunity.

Just today I was having a conversation with a friend here and realizing how much more nuanced my opinions -- about nearly everything -- have become since living abroad. I'm exceptionally grateful for that. I hope I can leave here as a better citizen of the world than I was when I arrived. I've met some wonderful people with whom I hope I will always stay in touch.

So with whom do I agree? Ali, who said that "despite its tired infrastructure and the fact that you have to dig to find some of its most brilliant treasures, it really is a great city"? Or the neighbor, who rather insensitively called it "a shithole"?

I'd say the neighbor's assessment is hasty and incomplete, although not wholly inaccurate. But Ali's opinion strikes me as the sort of nuanced viewpoint that comes from being an expat. And nuanced viewpoints are something that cities like this need if they're going to get a fair shake and continue improving.

Lowering our standards

The other day I was working with my laptop on the couch because the living room air conditioner is more efficient than the office air conditioner. I noticed an ant crawling across my keyboard, and a minute later, I saw an ant crawling across my leg. It was far from the first time.

I texted M., "You know what's creepy? I think we have ants in the couch I'm sitting on. And yet I'm not getting up, because there are probably ants in the chair, too."

He responded, "This morning at work there were ants in the sugar. And I put it in my coffee anyway."

It's going to be a long, muggy, buggy summer.

Light show

We're back from Cape Town, and I'd like to tell you that we're rested and rejuvenated. That we're ready to tackle any awkward Portuguese conversation, swerve around any barely visible pothole, and sleep through any amount of pounding techno bass. But that's not exactly, or remotely, true.

Cape Town was everything and more, and I'll tell you about it soon. First, though, I'm going to get caught up on some photos that I meant to post before we left. Now that's it spring here -- and rapidly approaching summer -- I'm sure we'll have plenty of these light shows. The balcony of our tenth-floor apartment isn't a bad viewing spot.

 

Cape-bound

We’re off to Cape Town for a week of real vacation, which we could both use. Every person I know who’s been to Cape Town –- and down here, that’s a lot of people –- says it’s one of their favorite cities in the world. When I mention that we’re going, the most common reaction is a big sigh and fluttery eyelids. You know that reaction? It’s the one that I imagine all women have when they take off their bras at the end of the day, and don’t even act like you don’t know what I’m talking about.

I’m absolutely giddy about this trip, or I will be after I finish writing the 2,500-word article I’m currently churning out, edit the 500-word article that’s waiting in the wings, and find time to throw clothes into a suitcase.

In photos, Cape Town looks very much like San Francisco, which is one of my favorite cities. It has a similar-looking coast, with rocky cliffs and beautiful beaches. It has mountains, including the very spectacular Table Mountain that overlooks the city. It has –- hold me -– wine country. Because Cape Town was settled by the Dutch and later colonized by the British, the city seems to look very European in layout and architecture. There’s shopping and bookstores and restaurants of every kind. And aside from the shopping and eating and book buying –- oh, the exciting things we have lined up.

The best way I can explain my feelings about this trip can be explained this way: The other day, a woman I met down here said that she loves Cape Town but finds the area “much too orderly and organized” for her taste. I had to fight to keep from sighing and doing the fluttery eye thing.

Quick, somebody call the local tourism agency. “A week in Cape Town: It’s like a whole week of taking off your bra at the end of the day, continually!”

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Last week, on a windy, overcast day when the sea was rough, a child drowned in the bay.

Does it happen here often? We never hear about it, but that doesn’t say much. Most days, children crowd certain stretches of the beach. On weekends, the sea is densely packed for miles.

This time, M. is the one who looked for her, found her, carried her from the water, and tried to resuscitate her. She’d been in the water far too long.

We don’t know what to make of the circumstances surrounding what happened. It seems she was playing with other children, and then she wasn’t. A boy was rescued. She wasn’t.

The people who rescued the boy -– they left.

The children with whom she had apparently been playing –- they left.

They all left. And nobody came.

Such a luxury, a publicly funded system of first-responders. Such a privilege, the peace of mind that rapid help is just three touch tones away, no matter who you are.

There’s no such system here.

But there are humans. There are friends and mothers and fathers and siblings. Who were the people who rescued one child and not another? Why didn’t they stay?

Did they know something M. didn’t know? He showed up after the commotion began, perhaps missing a crucial part of the events.

We don’t know. We want to believe there’s some acceptable explanation for what happened. There has to be, I keep saying, even though there doesn’t.

Our house manager tells us that in emergencies or accidents, people sometimes stand back instead of help. They’re afraid the police will accuse them of being involved instead of being innocent bystanders.

Does that really happen?

Yes, she says, the police may arrive and begin to… she weaves her hand side to side, like a snake slithering in the air… complicate things.

And still I want to ask why, as if I might get a satisfying explanation.

Next time, she says, call the TV station. The police might not come, but the TV station will come fast.

I wish I had been there. The memory of pulling a dead child from the sea is not one that I want him to bear by himself.

He guesses she was about 6.

How it came to be

He got the job offer.

I wasn’t at all surprised that he got the offer; I was surprised that suddenly we found ourselves considering packing up and moving to southeastern Africa. A week before, we had been contemplating… what? Extending our lease? Buying a condo? Traveling to Thailand? I don’t remember.

For the next several days, we discussed it only a little. Mostly, we let the idea roll around in our heads, figuring that eventually we’d open our mouths and the answer would spill out.

About a week later, we went to one of my favorite spots near our apartment: the atrium of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. We sat in the late afternoon spring light and made a list of reasons to stay and reasons to go. Both lists were compelling.

So then we took a vote. A secret ballot vote. Because our nation of two is a democracy.

Obviously, it was only a way to share our honest opinions without swaying each other. I knew that if we did the whole “Say ‘D.C.’ or ‘Moz’ on three!” thing, we’d both hold our tongues.

We set forth the ground rules. We were allowed to assign percentages to our choices.

We tossed our votes onto the table.

We mixed them up. (You know, to maintain anonymity.)

  

Then he opened the first ballot.

And he read it.

And he held it up for the camera.

What you can’t see here says, “DC 4o%, Moz 60%.”

Oh my. This is already a close vote.

And then he picked up the other ballot. And opened it. And smiled.

Smiled, as it turns out, at his own cleverness.

And here we sit in our apartment on Mao Tse Tung Avenue, in the sweltering heat of a Moz spring.

We’re about to hop into our car and drive down the left side of the road to our favorite sushi restaurant in the city, for dinner with a friend we met four months ago but feel like we’ve known forever. I’ll order in Portuguese, a language I’d never spoken until four months ago. (And still don’t speak very well, mind you.) Then we’ll come home, climb under the mosquito net, and hope for a cool ocean breeze.

I sure couldn’t have predicted any of it.

What that was

It's spring here, which means alternating periods of coolness and heat, and occasional days of clouds and sprinkles. I type this from the air conditioned living room, the only room with an AC unit that doesn't sound like a jet engine. Nights are becoming stickier. The mosquitoes are multiplying. The club in our building is opening more frequently, which means more nights when drunk people stumble onto the street below our window and shout, laugh, sing, clap, rev their engines. They usually wrap it up and go home by 6 a.m.

***

First impressions are often wrong and always incomplete. And that's one of the things about bloggging: If you blog as things happen instead of waiting for the whole story to play out, you're going to get some things wrong.

I said, in the beginning, that people here are warm and friendly. After four months, it's time to restate. The locals I've met through mutual connections are warm and friendly, and I already consider some of these people to be friends. But the people who don't know me from any other foreigner are not warm. They're usually not even friendly. In fact, they often come across as aloof. Reserved. Sometimes if I make the first gesture, they respond in a friendly way. Other times, they don't. But when language and culture are the barriers, it's hard to know whether our standards for politeness simply come from two different worlds.

I do know from working with refugees in the States that they think it's weird that Americans smile at each other so much. The last time I was on the country roads of Central Illinois near the remote area where my parents lived for several years, I engaged in the common practice of waving at fellow drivers whenever I passed them on the road. They all waved back. But I suppose it's time to accept that in most of the failed connections I attempt here, I am -- by cultural default -- the weirdo in the situation.

***

While we're on the subject of things I got wrong, here's one: I said that nobody begs.

Some children, some elderly people (a rarity here, given the short life expectancy), and some people with disabilities -- they beg. I suppose they must. They can't work, not in a city where even many able-bodied people can't get work.

Others find ways to make money. For example, there's an informal but accepted system in Maputo when it comes to parked cars: Boys and men hang out in places where people park their cars -- around restaurants, in particular -- and when you park your car and exit, they make eye contact with you. There's usually a shared nod or a word to indicate the agreement that they will keep an eye on your car while you eat and help you back out of the spot when you leave, and you will pay them somewhere around 5 or 10 meticais, which is between 17 and 35 cents.

In this city, sideview mirrors are stolen constantly, so sometimes it's nice to have a pair of eyes on your car while you're away from it. But sometimes you pull into a lot that nobody's watching and find somebody expecting to be paid when you leave an hour later.

I sometimes give money to the kids on the street. But there are always more kids, always at the window of the car at certain red lights, always rubbing their bellies, always with their hands out and the corners of their mouths turned down. Most of them will live their entire lives in poverty.

***

Last week we were running some errands around town. We were driving in a crowded area along the beach -- the weather was hot that day, and the beach was packed -- so I was driving very carefully. Suddenly, a guy stepped in front of our car, and I hit the brakes. He paused for a moment, and our car screeched to a halt. As I was stopped there on the street, he remained still. I motioned for him to go ahead, since we were already stopped and there was a long line of cars behind us. Instead, he positioned himself right in front of the car, right in the middle, and locked eyes with me. I knew something weird was happening.

He slammed his hand onto the hood of the car, and I was instantly transported, in my mind, to a grocery store parking lot in Northern California in 2004, when some guy on foot had decided to play chicken with my car. He hadn't been having fun; he had been angry. Unpredictable. I never knew why he had done it, but I felt as though it were either a display of power over me or an act of stupidity by somebody too high to think straight. Both possibilities were unnerving, and the experience had rattled me.

This time in Maputo. I shouted, "Move!" in a useless, frustrated English.

He stared. I honked. He stared.

I turned the wheel to the right and he repositioned himself to block my way. I turned the wheel to the left and inched forward, and he repositioned himself and hit the hood again.

Trapped. The pupils of his eyes were far too dilated for the sunny afternoon. People around us began to watch.

All the while, M was telling me to drive. "He'll move," he said. But every time I put my foot on the gas, the man hit the hood of my car and motioned for me to continue. Go ahead, he seemed to say. I dare you.

A minibus full of people pulled up alongside our car and the driver got out. I couldn't understand what he said, but his expression and hand gestures seemed to say, Come on, man, don't do this, don't be like this, let these people go. He gently pushed the man away from our car, but no sooner was the driver out of our path than the other guy was back in it.

I was livid. He was high or drunk, and the way he had intentionally stepped in front of our moving car had made me feel instantly ill. I was furious to think that he had some kind of death wish and would attempt to make innocent people conspire in it. I was furious at his threatening behavior, unsteady though he was. And I was furious that he had managed -- him on foot and me the one behind the wheel of the truck -- to make me feel terrorized while I simply tried not to injure him.

I put my foot on the gas. When the front of the car gently pressed against him and didn't stop, he attempted to stand his ground but then stepped to our left. A moment later, I had yanked the wheel to the right and managed to get him to the side of the car. I pushed the gas pedal further as he tried to keep up with the car and hit it with the palm of his hand until we were out of reach.

"What the fuck? What the fuck?" I'd been saying it all along, and I kept saying it as we continued down the road, my body tight. "What was that?"

"He wanted money," M said.

"Money? How do you know that? How do you even know that?"

"His hand," he said. "He was rubbing his belly."

Rubbing his belly. It's what the kids at the traffic lights do.

I hadn't even noticed.

***