Mystery solved

The Ofelia conundrum was solved and I went for coffee with her, with zero recollection of having met her whilst in an inebriated state. Managed to gloss over it. She brought her charismatic four-year old son James who was obsessed (understandably - I always used to love it) with the Sonic the Hedgehog game on her phone. The way children can switch into meltdown mode as soon as a phone freezes is fairly worrying, and I wonder what sort of field day psychologists will be having twenty years from now. At least Sonic involves the innocent collecting of gold rings and not bloody gun violence.

Ofelia is a medical doctor who had been accepted onto a masters in Public Health in Nottingham, if she reaches a sufficient standard of English. We bemoaned the British weather and she said she'd experienced the cold on a one-week epidemiology course she'd attended in Aberdeen one June. Hate to break it to you love, but that's about the warmest it gets in those parts. She's going to South Africa for a month to study intensively for her IELTS language test. I hope she smashes it.

I went with her across the bridge to Catembe, where she has a plot of land and needed to pay the guard, Joao. In the last few months Joao's family have sent him a sixteen year old girl who will become his bride. Ofelia thought she seemed pregnant, and she was incredibly timid and no doubt isolated with zero network after travelling from Zambézia Province in central Mozambique. Although it fell on deaf ears, Ofelia urged him to send her to the local school, which is free except for a registration fee.

Otherwise her entire life's fate will be in acting subservient to an older man (11 years older, which is mammoth when you are 16), with no financial independence of her own and with complete illiteracy and a much harder struggle to grasp opportunities. It seemed like Joao dismissed Ofelia's pleas as detracting from the tasks she must complete around the home to serve his needs. A very clear attitude in such extremely patriarchal societies that maintains the male dominance over women.

If she can get over the embarrassment she will feel at beginning her primary education at age 16, and stick it out, it's the moral thing Joao should support his wife to do. Ofelia isn't going to let this one drop.

The afternoon was low key with an hour spent on the beach. In the evening some food and beers with my pal from the British High Commission at a laid back restaurant.