Friday 30 May 2014

Gone crab fishing . .

I met this lovely lady on the beach this morning - she was fishing for crabs, and chatted away to me for some time, showing me her catch - I tried to speak to her, but with my very limited Portuguese, I did a lot of smiling. I'm sorry I didn't understand, I could have had a very nice lesson in crab fishing, but we're best friends now all the same - everyone is so warm and friendly here . .


Finished butterfly number 2 . .

We continue our quest to populate Mossuril with butterflies, the hairdresser has asked for one next.
We will start to do some hand done type now to compliment them - tomorrow the Dhow sail, and then we will start on the festival programme - it's hot now, and the students have gone swimming with Morra the dog - after a big morning of work in the sun . .



Friday May 30th - everyone wants a butterfly . .

Today we have gone to downtown Mossuril to paint a big butterfly on the wall of the internet cafe.
It's been used as an environmental graphic to draw attention to the film festival - everyone wants one now. Mossuril is a lively village - lots of school kids, going to THREE shifts of school at both the primary and secondary schools here - The Mozambique government has made a huge effort to re-establish quality education here since all schools were destroyed in the civil war. The internet cafe is the nicest I've ever seen - note the great type . . and the resident goat.
Work begins on butterfly number 2 - we will chart its progress today. All of our activity draws a huge crowd to watch, and participate.
I've done my first driving in Mozambique  - along the sandy track to Mossuril from Sunset, ferrying students with paint, water etc.
Sunday June 1st is International Childrens Day, so there will be an official opening of the new nursery school, sponsored by The Teran Foundation - watch this space for our mural later.






Thursday 29 May 2014

Moments in Moz . . .








End of the day . .

It's 5pm here in Mozambique, and it's beginning to get dark - we have to get used to the early darkness, but we have light at the other end of the day - from 4.30am the cock starts crowing, it's an early start for the bucket shower and the bright light.
The pace is slow here, everyone languidly goes about their business. Today was busier than usual I'm told, with all our visitors - as well as the film people, we had a group from Nampula from the Department for Women and Social Action, they came to see the SHINE project, and were really impressed to see all the design work created by Mikaela, and how it's been used to get the ball rolling.
The students have now gone into Mossuril to scout for another location to paint a giant butterfly. All the locals want one painted on their buildings - we will have to see how much paint we have, as on Saturday the butterfly will be painted on a Dhow sail.
It's been a great two days  - still not seen a Bushbaby  . . .









We had some helpers . . .


Important visitors . .

Today we had two delegations come to Mossuril - one from the National Film Institute in Maputo, who came to decide how they would support the LIFE Mossuril Film Festival. They were very pleased with what they saw, and took some of the posters away to be displayed in Maputo at the Ministry of Culture.


This is what the butterfly looks like now . .






In the beginning . .

At the beginning of the 2013/14 academic year, I had no idea I would be writing a Blog from Mozambique at the end of it. Today, I'm sitting on the terrace of Sunset Boulevard, a community hotel in Mossuril, a coastal village in the North of the country, with my colleague Iain Macdonald and five students, trying to get my head around the extraordinary journey we have been on to get to this point.
It started with some conversations by email, and the possibility of a couple of small graphic design projects, for initiatives in development at  The Teran Foundation - could we produce identity and design work for a women's soap co-operative and a local film festival?
Why yes - of course we could, it was exactly what we were looking for - live projects for our year three students on the BDes (Hons) Graphic Design programme at Edinburgh Napier University.
To cut a long story short, we did the work, we were given very generous support from our University, and now we are here - in Mossuril, working to progress the work we started back in September. Iain and I will stay for two weeks and the students for a month.
Two government delegations have just arrived, and we are really delighted to be able to support local people in getting their projects off the ground and noticed - all the work we do will be posted on this blog daily, we hope you enjoy our story. I'm going to take some pictures now, of the first things we are doing - with little in the way of tools, it's graphics from the ground up. 
This poster designed by one of our group, Ross Sneddon, will be appearing in some new forms today -