Mbabane and Manzini

Again this is from a time-limited internet café but I'll try to update asmuch as I can. Last weekend Rachel, Lucy and I went to Mozambique which wasan adventure in many ways! First of all not being able to get a bus fromthe border to Maputo so ending up in a truck full of plastic chairs, thengetting stopped by the police multiple times on the way to the city(fortunately they didn't take money off us, which has happened to severalof our friends). The city itself is a huge sprawling mess - completelydifferent from anything in Swaziland! The centre is bustling with peopletrying to sell you things, and some very modern Western buildings but somevery run-down ones too. The suburbs get progressively less nice untilthey're basically shanty towns. Our hostel was good, if noisy, and rightnext to the beach, though it was a bit too cold for swimming!We spent Saturday on Catembe, strolling along the beach in search of arestaurant which was further away than anticipated! It was well worth it onarriving - I had the biggest prawn I have ever seen, along with some othervery yummy seafood. We went to the famous fish market in the evening,though it was much quieter than anticipated, and bought our fish then tookit to a restaurant to have it cooked! From there, we went to Coconuts nightclub, which was good fun, with nice cocktails although prices wereapproaching UK levels. This was a pretty late night so the next morning wasa bit of a wash out, but we found ourselves back to Swaziland bymid-afternoon in time for some catch-up sleep before a week of work.I've been doing Obs&Gynae stuff this week, both in outpatients and theatre- got to assist in a few C-sections which was cool, and even got to(attempt to) suture! Outpatients was fun; I was seeing my own patients butwe had one translator between 3 of us, which makes the Cambridge-Calgary model break down a bit! I've taken the day off today because one of thedoctors was going to a conference in Mbabane and has brought Joel and mealong to explore the city - though there's not much of it to see. Tomorrowwill probably be more baby-catching, followed by trying to write up some ofmy project before my supervisor leaves! I can't believe there's only 2 weeks to go now; time really has flown by out here. Now I'm just in theprocess of trying to get rid of as much stuff as possible so there's room in my suitcase for souvenirs etc

...As a brief add-on, as the last internet cafe I was in wouldn't let me post this, I'm now in Manzini, having spent lots (in Swazi terms) on gifts, souvenirs, Africa tat etc. Weather is good and we've just had KFC, so I'm very happy. Not sure I'll be able to bring any clothes home though!