Shopping in Pemba

This morning involved looking around the key shops and main market in Pemba. All supplies that can't be sourced from Guludo Village can be found in Pemba. Large supermarkets sell most dry store stapes as well as imported products. Soy sauce and pastas are available but they cost.

In fact, Pamba is an expensive. At the open air market fruit and veg was much more costly than expected. The current exchange rate of meticais to sterling sits at forty to the pound.

Water melon is about £1 a kilo, onions are£1.75/kg and cucumbers at £1.5/kg. Tomatoes have apparently just shot up to 100mt/kg, weighing in a whopping £2.5o/kg. The honey you can see in the 25cl water bottles costs 310mt, about £7.75. apparently it's like rocking horse shit - rare as hell, but much tastier.

Fortunately village prices are much cheaper. Tomatoes are half the price at 50mt/kg and a dozen eggs are 40mt compared with about 110mt in Pemba.

Off to the lodge at 9am tomorrow with two guests and Cassiano who will be driving...

Guludo Beach Lodge

It's eight in the morning at Jomo Kenyatta International airport, flight KQ101 arrived from London Heathrow at 0610. I have nine hours to wait until flight TM4466 departs for Pemba, Mozambique, my new home for at least the next twelve months.

I will be working as Chef/Food and Beverage Manager at Guludo Beach Lodge in the Quirimbas National Park in Northern Mozambique. The lodge opened in 2002, set up by Amy and Neal Carter-James as a sustainable tourist destination and social enterprise. The lodge intends to have limited environmental impact and act as the key source of employment in the local area.

The Nema Foundation was set up alongside the lodge and receives 5% of all revenues to provide education, health initiatives and food programmes for 16 villages, currently reaching some 16,000 people.

Seafood from local fishermen and vegetables from farming co-operatives, set up by Nema, provide most of the supplies for Guludo's restaurant. Currently no mains water or electricity is available at the lodge, but last week we heard news that power had reached Guludo Village two kilometers away. Electricity should be up an running within the next six months.

In the meantime, its good-bye restaurant analyst office job and hello Guludo Beach Lodge. With any luck I'll have time for regular updates and eatmynels will become food blog and Guludo journal. Please like us on facebook and follow on twitter.

See you later London.

P.S. I love you.