The shrimp curry I ordered was awesome, and they were nice enough to leave the heads off this time… A few *censored*tails later, Dan was invited onstage to join the band. Well, I volunteered him, to save myself, but he didn’t seem to mind… Until it was over. Dan sang three songs and played guitar with his own personal backup band! He said he was nervous, but we couldn’t tell. At dusk, we caught the ferry back to Maputo. I think it was on the ferry that I picked up a nice little arm-fungus that has since grown to the size of fifty cent piece, but the jury’s still out on what it is exactly. Maybe tic bite! Woozy from the boat’s exhaust fumes and fungus, we (me) napped at Chris’ for about an hour, and then Jennifer called to invite us out for the night.

We started with dinner at a restaurant near the Faira Popular, a carnival down by the water. It was me, Dan, Jennifer, Jim (old friend of Chris Shutz’s who just happens to be work at the embassy here), Grant (a photographer who came to Maputo ten years ago and never left) and Estebon, (crazy Fulbright Scholar who teaches physiology at the university, discovers unknown animal species up north, and watches Jerry Springer when he’s eating Pizza at Mundos).

From there we went to Gypsy Bar, a quiet place with lots of women-for-hire. I was told to hold onto Dan or he might get snatched. We shared some B52’s – half kaulua and half amarula – and then made our way to Mambo’s, the popular dance club here. The dance floor is outdoors, so you can look up at the stars while you boogie, which might have been the reason Dan and I both threw caution to the wind and started to get-down. We weren’t too bad. Or at least the many B-52’s made us feel as if we weren’t. Suddenly it was 4am and I was in a perpetual state of dance. At one point I realized that I was still dancing, even while standing in the bathroom stall- no stars and no one around.