I know. It’s bonkers. We came back from the US in September 2011 and went to our room to get something and now it’s March, 2012. 

It’s been great and strange to come back to Mozambique.

Strange because- wait. We live in Mozambique?

And great because we came back to our house and playground, neighbors, friends, and the chance to explore more of the country. Starting just a few blocks from our house.

This beach is about a 10 minute walk from us. Lining the beach are little food shacks where you can get freshly bbq’d chicken and for just a few cents a guy will hack the heck out of a fresh coconut for you. 

Lula drank from her first coconut. 

It’s a sweet picture because you can’t tell that how much she disliked it. We tried to explain that she’s part Puerto Rican and should like it but she couldn’t hear us because she was loudly full-force spitting it out. 

After the beach, our friends showed us an unexpected petting zoo just outside the city. Tiny donkey, why are you so small?

Like the rings on a fallen tree, you can mark the passage of time in these pictures by Mindy’s highlights. This is an old picture because the highlights look (more or less) normal. 

We also found a new beach that’s way cleaner than the usual Maputo stretch of sand

Our friends have a little house on the outskirts of Maputo- kinda like a country house but more village-y. Lula loved playing in the sand. (Note the old school glass Coke bottle!)

Getting dirty

And fighting over a watering can

In other important events, Lula wore Nils’ old lederhosen. She rocked them.

And….the curls are coming in! It’s a rite of passage for any Hernandez female.

Other critical events: Lula was a cat for Halloween. A warm kitty since it was about 90 degrees.

This one is admittedly blurry but so sweet that I don’t care

And we had visitors! Tio Ramon and Micah came to visit!

With Ramon, we went hiking in Swaziland. With images of hiking the Swiss Alps with his little girl, Nils was super pumped to use our hiking backback. Things didn’t work out exactly as planned.

Just FYI, this is a really slow way to climb a mountain. Or anything really. 

(Thanks for the cool Brooklyn sweater Michelle!)

The “hiking” dissolved into playing

(like sand through the hour glass…so are the roots on Mindy’s head. Time has clearly passed as Mindy’s roots appear in force.)

“Hiking” then turned into milk drinking

But we did see cool wildlife running around.

We also made Thanksgiving dinner in our cozy Swazi cabin

And went on safari in Krueger

Thanks for visiting, Ramon! 

Ate Ja! (Until soon!)

And Micah came to visit, too!

Micah’s trip was shorter (he was here for work) so we just hung out in Maputo and somehow we took zero pictures. So here’s  a super old one!

Despite the lack of photos, it was a great visit. Lula couldn’t pronounce Micah so it became Ca-Ca. Awesome. She still asks for Ca-Ca, and we’re 90% sure she means Micah. Thanks for coming, Ca-Ca! Come again and we’ll take pictures! Promise.

What else? It’s summer and sun is BLAZING. So we basically have been haning out and wearing shades.

Since then we took a trip to Cape Town, Nils went election monitoring and we took an amazing trip to a nearby lake/lagoon. We’ll write more about that but until then, here’s some

Bonus Pictures for the Lulaphiles

This is an overdue post, but we’ve been resting.

Touring the US with a 1 year old is like traveling with an eccentric rock star who makes crazy demands that make no sense (“you must diaper me while I run screaming through the house”), throws food, and wets herself, but is also so adorable and exciting.

So it’s an adventure but it’s really tiring. 

Here are some stats on our summer in the US

• 30 hours- total travel time (with flight delays) from Mozambique to the US
• 11 glorious hours- total time Lula slept on the plane to the US!  
• 2.5 - months Lula and Mindy were in the US (Nils for about a month and a half- he had to shuttle back on forth.)
• 4 - number of weddings Nils managed to go to in only a month and a half
• 7 - number of cities/countries visited (LA, San Diego, Big Sur, Seattle, DC, New York, Mexico)
• 12- number of different houses/apartments/hotels we stayed in over the summer
• 16 million jillion- number of times we thought to ourselves ”wait- what the f? why are we moving around so much?”

There’s really too much to tell so let’s go with the highlight reel (in no particular order):

1. Fresh fruit in the summer in California is AMAZING. This is a picture of Lula covered in strawberry juice wearing, of course, nana’s hat.

We get fruit here, sure, but not a ton of variety and a lot of it is *crazy* expensive because it’s imported. So Lula was in heaven- she ate fistfuls of blueberries, mounds of juicy peaches and plums and tons of strawberries.  

2. Hanging with Mindy’s nephews and nieces.

They are awesome and wild and we miss them massively. Hanging out with her cousins, Lula got lots of new words including “No!” and “Mine!” Her cousin Ella literally made Lula laugh so hard she fell down.

3. The beach house.

With Nana, we rented a little beach house in Ventura (“shabby chic” with the emphasis a bit more on the shabby part) and people came to visit- Jade, Micah, Rachel, Jenny, and all the nieces and nephews. We’d walk to this great park overlooking the ocean in the mornings 

Lula discovered her deep, irrational love of chasing seagulls. She’s like Don Quixote but with birds.

Later, as it got cooler, we’d move to the beach, which was just a few houses down.

4. Nana!

It was great to be able to spend so much time with Nana. And Lula loved playing with Nana- in fact, one of her first new words in California was “Nana”. As anyone who knows Vida (who once briefly but seriously considered officially changing her name to “Nans”) can imagine, she was *thrilled*.

She even watched Lula for a few days so we could attend Dawn and Justin’s wedding solo and take a mini vacation to Big Sur. Thanks Nans!

5. Family! 

Grandma Delia makes amazing Puerto Rican rice and beans. Every Hernandez loves them. So you can imagine how happy Grandma Delia was when Lula tasted her first bite and let out a huge, “mmmmmmm” and then cleaned her plate. You could see Grandma’s heart swell. Then she began feeding the rice and beans to Grandma. 

We also got to hang with Marc and Carie, which was great. We stayed with them for weeks (thanks guys!) and got to walk to what has to be one of the best parks in all of LA. I’d see Kendra (the ex-playboy bunny from Girls Next Door) at the park basically everyday. 

Lula loved Marc and Carie and Marc would stick out his tongue at Lula which would make her laugh and do it back. Now, when we even mention his name she lights up and sticks out her tongue.

It’s cute, but Jenny and Mindy taught Marc’s children to scream “nipples!!” in crowded malls, restaurants, stores while making little o’s with their fists.  That was cute and hilarious.

We were massively lucky to have Jenny around basically all summer. Just huge hearts everywhere.

6. Cruise to Mexico

With Mindy’s family we went on a cruise to Mexico. Cruises are weird. For good and bad, this picture says pretty much everything about the cruise.

We got off the boat in Cabo and took a little motorboat to a small patch of sand, which was quiet and pretty and great. 

7. Friends!

We got to spend time with some of our favorite people in the world in LA, DC, and NYC. It was fantastic.

Sadly, our camera was stolen at a Denny’s in Ventura so we have some picture gaps here.

In addition to above, you should be seeing pictures of the weddings of Alex +Shana, Justin+ Dawn, Tom+Brooke, and Micah+Sarah. And us weathering the “hurricane” in NYC with Anne, MT, Ramon, Tony, and Andres, playing in the park with Summer and Gus, Nils’ birthday in DC with lots of Woos (Grant! Liz! Brett! ABP!) Greengrass, Mike Moats, Al, Jan! Mindy eating In-N-Out on the beach at dusk with Jade, and an amazing visit from Meri (sorry again about the cat poop on your pillow!) and much more.

We got a new camera just in time for hanging with cousin Michelle, Brad and Gabo. Lula received her first kiss. 

Cousin Michelle taught the kids how to play softball at a Capitol Hill cafe. It went about as well as you’d expect.

Since Nana is my mother and Uncle Sid is her father, we were totally unfazed by the dirty looks of people around us trying to have a quiet coffee at 7am as Lula and Gabo played t-ball under their tables. 

Long story short- it was a fantastic summer. It’s been a long time since we felt like we had a real, long, old-school “summer”. It’s not something we’ll get to do often.

But it’s nice to be back in Mozambique after so much travel, and Lula is happy to have her room, toys and books back.

We already miss our people so make plans to come visit! (Ramon will be our first visitor- see you soon, Padrino!)

If you’d read this far, you have to be related to us. Like a close blood relation.  Nana, is that you? Either way, thanks for reading! If you want even more, here are some

Bonus Pics!

Lula at the beach house

Mindy surfing in Santa Barbara. You can’t tell how bad I am in this photo. Notice the massive waves.

Getting ready to board the plane back to Mozambique. Still so happy. Still so clean.

With Rachel and family in Ventura

Jenny and Ryan always eat this way. It’s really inefficient.

After 28 hours of travel, these were the stairs Lula wanted to climb

Uh, I’m not really a talker on plane- no offense, buddy. Keep to myself. Just eat my crackers and scream my head off sometimes like any other passenger.

Climbing stairs to the slide in Ventura.

We have a crush on the the gorgeous and fascinating Kingdom of Swaziland, or Swazilandia in Portuguese, which is actually even more fun to say. It’s a country- er, Kingdom- with a proper King, Queens, and princesses, and annual dance of the topless virgins. Swaziland is about the size of New Jersey and it’s only a 3 hour drive from Maputo.

It’s one of the most beautiful places we have ever been. And also one of the most surprising.

A few months ago we visited for the first time and went hiking with friends in the surprisingly Alp-like mountains.

All the hiking made Lula tired

As we left the hike, we saw zebras roaming the mountains

And then a few weeks ago we returned to go to Bush Fire, the huge, multi-day music festival that brings great performers to Swaziland from all over Africa.

Lula had a great time dancing in her own special way (she stomps her tiny feet) and roaming around trying to drink beer from people’s cups.

On are way back from Bush Fire, Nils and I made a mental list of interesting and surprising things about Swaziland: 

SURPRISING THINGS ABOUT THE KINGDOM OF SWAZILAND

10. There is a Curves gym in Swaziland!

9. Swaziland takes careful driving VERY seriously- there are speed bumps, basically, every 10 minutes.

8. In Swaziland, cows have the right of way

7. In an attempt to control the AIDS epidemic the King ruled that for 5-years all unmarried young women had to remain celibate. Those who broke the rules were fined a cow.

6.  During that time the King married two teenage girls.

5. He fined himself 2 cows. 

4.  The King’s father, Sobhuza, had 70 wives, 180 children, and over 1,000 grandchildren

3. Did I mention there is a CURVES gym? 

2. With its canyons and lines of stores, Swaziland actually reminds us A LOT of Simi Valley 

Right? This could easily be Simi Valley.

1. The King of Swaziland looks frighteningly like a certain American comedian.

l

Creepy, right? Is Craig Robinson secretly the King of Swaziland? Or is the King of Swaziland secretly Craig Robinson?

So Swaziland is interesting, beautiful and fun. It also, at first, seems like one of the most developed countries in Africa- hotels, and restaurants are beautiful, the major roads are perfect, and their gorgeous crafts are known throughout Africa.

So it’s shocking to learn that Swaziland has the one of the lowest life expectancy rates in the world- some estimate are as low as 35 years. It also has the highest HIV rate in the world- some estimates are as high as 40%. (The rate in the US in under 1%.)

Swaziland is an ACTUAL kingdom. While all other African monarchies have fallen, Swaziland is the only absolute monarchy left on the continent. There are no political parties and the king appoints, basically, the entire government.

King Mswati became King when he was just 18 years old.

And then there are the Queens. He has somewhere around 15 wives, some of whom he married when they were teenagers. The king takes new wives at the annual Reed Dance where thousands of topless virgins march and dance.

Many people blame the high HIV rate on multiple marriages. And, obviously, the King and his 15 (or is 17 now?) wives certainly aren’t helping model monogamy.  

And, as with any kingdom, there are the princes and princesses. His eldest daughter, Princess Sikhanyiso, who some say is the great hope for Swaziland, is actually a 23 year college student. She studied in California and is now in Australia. She is actually a really good rapper (see youtube link below).

There have been protests and efforts to overthrow the King, but nothing as serious as the widespread protests in northern Africa. A really fascinating documentary came out recently on the Kingdom of Swaziland and the efforts to overthrow the government. It got rave reviews, but little else.

You can actually watch the entire thing on YouTube- I promise: it’s the most interesting movie you’ve never heard of.  

The First thing you really need to know about Lula’s party is that despite Mindy’s desire not to raise a “girly” girl, Lula wore a tutu, leg warmers, and a onesie with an appliqued pearl necklace on it. And a flower headband. She looked RAD.

The next thing you need to know is that Rita (the Hernandez family’s neighbor and friend from Northridge) is a gifted baker and gave Mindy an amazing 2-layer chocolate cake recipe. 

You should also know that it was delicious. And that before her birthday Lula had never before really eaten any sugar or chocolate. 

She basically ate cake with huge saucer-sized eyes while repeating, “yum! yum! yum!” over and over for about 20 minutes.

While being fed cake by her 3 year old friend, Lula also grabbed a handful of cake to munch on while waiting for her next bite. 

All the sugar effected mother and daughter differently.

The final thing you need to know is that after the chocolate cake we roasted marshmallows for s’mores.

We had a sugerific time and the little girls in the neighborhood even created a chalk mural for the party.

Also, you should know that you were all missed.

In the Hernandez family, we have a tradition of making montages for all major and minor events- It’s your 13th birthday? Mazel tov, you’re a man! Here’s a montage! In honor of this tradition, below is Lula’s first montage!

Happy Birthday, Little Lu.

Many people have asked us about the history of Mozambique. Part of its history, its socialist past, is evident in the surprising street names around Maputo.

It sounds like the setup to a joke, but if you take Karl Marx to Lenin and then a right on Kim Il Sung after you pass Mao Tse Tung (and Mugabe Plaza), you don’t get to some 9th circle of Communist/Socialist netherworld. You literally get to the bakery. There’s even a street locally known* as Avenida de Pol Pot. (But that’s mostly because of the crater-sized potholes that snake around the street.)

After achieving independence from Portugal in 1975, the leaders of the resistance movement, FRELIMO, established a one-party state based on a communist model of government. All private companies were nationalized.  The government has since changed into a (more-or-less) multi-party democracy and a market-based economy. But for some reason, the street signs remain. 

A great summary of Mozambican history can be found on the blog, Hotel Universo, which interestingly is written by a long-lost childhood friend (Dave Morton) of Nils’. They hadn’t seen each other in over 20 years when Nils randomly ran into Dave at a reception at the American Ambassador’s residence in Maputo.  (Dave actually mentions their meeting on this blog post.)

Dave is here as a Fullbright doing his PhD dissertation in African history. Below is an excerpt from his brief post about the history of Mozambique:

Mozambique is a country twice the size of California spread out along Africa’s southeast coast. The latest estimate puts its population at about twenty million, with about two million or so living in its capital Maputo, known in colonial times as Lourenço Marques, and located in the country’s far south. Mozambique won its independence from Portugal in 1975 after more than 450 years of unevenly imposed though often brutal Portuguese rule. Frelimo, the nationalist movement that fought for Mozambican independence, has governed the country during the 35 years since. It has done so through thin and thinner. In the Mozambique the Portuguese left to Frelimo, there remained about thirty doctors in the entire country. One in every three Mozambican children died in infancy. More than a dozen languages are spoken in Mozambique, but when the new flag was raised more than 90 percent of Mozambicans did not read nor speak Portuguese, the one language that was to unite them.

The first president of Frelimo was Eduardo Mondlane, a UN research officer who earned his masters and doctorate at American universities. His The Struggle for Mozambique, written in limpid English years before it appeared in Portuguese translation (presumably to appeal to potential American sympathizers), is as good a place as any to start reading about Mozambique during the last years of colonial rule. Mondlane was assassinated in 1969 in Dar es Salaam.

Mondlane’s successor and the first president of independent Mozambique was Samora Machel, a former nurse and a dynamo at the lectern, who by force of personality led Mozambique through the food shortages and warfare of the most trying decade in its history. It was Machel who popularized the phrase “A luta continua”—the struggle continues—adopted the world over by those who raised their fist against persistent underdevelopment and Western capitalism and whatever else was deemed to be colonialism in disguise. In 1986 he was killed in a plane crash that many suspect was a South African act of sabotage.

Machel

The white minority regimes of southern Africa, Rhodesia and apartheid South Africa, became Mozambique’s great tormentors following the Portuguese withdrawal, as they considered the existence just next door of an African majority-ruled, socialist country to be an intolerable threat. First Rhodesia and then South Africa funded, armed, and trained a guerrilla force of Mozambicans discontented with Frelimo’s one-party rule. Renamo, as this force was called, was given a straightforward mission: to create deadly havoc in every corner of Mozambique. This mission was accomplished to horrific effect. The sixteen years of civil war that began soon after independence cost an estimated one million Mozambican lives and displaced millions more.

————

Machel’s successor, Joaquim Chissano, continued the reforms Machel began and started peace talks with RENAMO. The new constitution enacted in 1990 provided for a multi-party political system, market-based economy, and free elections. The civil war ended in October 1992 with the Rome General Peace Accords. Chissano later won the Mo Ibrahim Prize for his leadership and peaceful, democratic transfer of power when he stepped down as President after two terms.

Today, Mozambique is still finding its footing as a functioning multi-party democracy. Although Renamo is the main opposition party, it’s a fairly weak opposition these days, and it can seem sometimes like Mozambique still functions as a one party state. The political science term of art for this is “dominant party democracy.”

The Frelimo elite run the show, but the question remains- how well can the government steer the country’s development process? Challenges include rampant corruption, low literacy and education levels (an entire generation of Mozambicans was largely unable to get an education because of the conflicts), and an underdeveloped economy that doesn’t produce very much that can be sold in the global market.

On the plus side, Mozambique is one of the “post-conflict” African success stories in that, 18 years after the end of the conflict, the country remains peaceful and relatively stable. It’s economy is growing at between 6-8% per year, and Mozambicans are resourceful and entrepreneurial. Significantly increased national wealth from the extractive industries (recently discovered mineral deposits, coal, natural gas, and maybe even oil) are just beyond the horizon.

Recently discovered deposits like coal may make Mozambique a more wealthy country. Or not.

The big test will be how the government decides to capture those new resources and what they will spend it on- poverty alleviation and investing in the Mozambican people? Or will all that money end up lining the pockets of the well-connected few?  (Trying to help move the country toward the former is actually part of Nils’ work with USAID) It will be interesting to watch this dynamic unfold over the next four years.

* By “locally known” we mean “Mindy and her friend Christine.”

Lula 10 months: the Slide show

(*note: we’re late putting this up…Lula is now aaaaaaalmost 1 year!)

I know this photo looks like it was taken in 1901 with one of those cameras that actually smoke when you take a picture, but it was actually taken in December just after news of the WikiLeaks broke. (It was taken with my blackberry in a dark-ish room, hence the grainy-ness)

We were at a party with the kind of people directly impacted by the leaks and this was their dart board. Later there was a pinata- also with Julian Assange’s face.  

The leaked cables said some unflattering things and implicated the highest levels of the government in some serious narco-trafficking shennagains.  

President Gabuza- involved in narco-nannigans?

American officials here work hard and carefully to nurture relationships with Mozambiquean government officials. And those relationships are critical to pushing the government on certain issues (get more serious about human trafficking) as well as building relationships with local people who might have information that helps US development and government officials learn more about the true and inner workings of Mozambique. The leaked cables put all that hard work at risk. 

But not everyone viewed the leaks as a terrible thing. Apparently the corruption, even at the highest levels, is an open secret in Mozambique. We were with a Mozambican friend who said that people here were so happy when the news broke- like “dancing around happy” because now the truth was out in the open for the world to see.

It is a little hard to see, but that is a dart through Julian’s head so not everyone was “dancing around happy” about the news. For one thing, although the cables redacted the names of sources, they made it clear to many people who those sources were. One Mozambiquean apparently felt so unsafe after the cables broke he left the country, possibly for good.

We were talking to someone doing research on corruption here who said that she found a few people who did not want to talk to her because of the leaks.

A friend who works with a company where there are both Americans and Mozambicans said that her Mozambiquean colleagues no longer feel as comfortable talking openly around Americans. “We still act friendly” she said, “but it’s different. Now we’re careful. There’s a level of trust that is gone.”

So there are costs. And those costs have been clear and obvious.

It’s harder to tell what positive impact they’ve had here. There may be some effects beneath the surface that we just can’t see yet.

But that’s just here. What impact did the leaks have in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Lebanon and throughout the Middle East? Would the popular uprisings have happened without the leaks, which made public the depth and gravity of the corruption in those countries?

Christmas in Switzerland 2010

Plus: Lula eats rooster

Lula and cousin Emilie sing

*Note: not a lot happens in this video. It’s pretty much only interesting to the most die-hard Lula-philes. (you know who you are.)

We went to Switzerland to visit Nils’ family for the holidays. The large hoods gave Lula the perfect frame for practicing her model shots.  Here you can see her working on her look, baby Blue Steel. 

It was great to see family and have a bit of winter (it’s about 90 degrees with 99% humidity here in Maputo).  We even found time for a few hours of skiing, which was awesome.

Lula went sledding in the Alps, which might sound exciting, but Lula was deeply nonplussed.  It actually looked like a bit of a Weekend at Bernie’s situation.

What Lula clearly loved was hanging with her cousin Emilie. (When she first met Emilie Lula immediately tried to suck on her nose- Lula’s highest compliment.)

Emilie carried Lula around like a big doll, which Lula seemed to like, and sang to her in French.

True to her Swiss and French blood, Lula tried a bit of fondue and was very interested in the champagne.

Lula also loved spending time with Mamylene who always makes Lula smile

Lula also met and adored her Aunt Lysiane and Uncle Sali (who fed Lula bits of the traditional Swiss Christmas dinner: chapon, or castrated rooster. Lula apparently adores castrated rooster).

And of course, she was fascinated by her Aunt Anita.

We did learn that traveling with a baby can be *rough*. Lula didn’t love all the travel and next time we will definitely pack lighter.

A few years ago my sister Jenny was getting pumped for her day. “Y’know what, Mindy?” she asked full of enthusiasm, “it’s gonna be a GREAT day!” With her chin in the air, she turned happily, ready to stride out into that great day. Instead, she walked directly into the screen door so hard she actually knocked herself over. 

I just found the video below- I think Lula is about 3 months in it. This video, I think, is kind of a baby raising version of Jenny’s “it’s gonna be a great day!” You often think you’re up- you’ve made it! You and your baby are doing great, and who said this whole baby raising thing was so hard, anyway?- only to find out that you’ve been walking around with poo on your forehead all day. 

Like babies, the video starts out so sweet. But gets real, real fast.

Lula Coos and, um, does other stuff. You’ll see.  (Make sure your volume is up!)

Lula is probably 3 months old in this video. 

Lula 7 months: The Slideshow