Bye Bye Tete Airport?

Chingodzi airport, in Mozambique may be located over a coal deposit   [ 2010-10-08 ]

Maputo, Mozambique, 8 Oct – Australian mining company Riversdale Mining plans to check if Chingodzi airport, in Mozambique’s Tete province is or is not sitting on top of billions of tons of coal, under the terms of a memorandum signed Thursday in Maputo.

The memorandum, which was signed with airport management company, Aeroportos de Moçambique, will lead to the Australian company carrying out detailed studies to assess the quantity of coal in the area, with the possibility that the airport will be transferred to another place, if the deposits prove to be of commercial value.

Last June, Riversdale Capital Moçambique officially informed the Mozambican government of the possibility of there being coal underneath the airport, and since then has been in negotiations to find the best way of exploring them.

Jennifer Gravey, the company’s legal director, said, after signing the contract, that the board of Riversdale Capital Moçambique was of the opinion that it is a very significant coal deposit, “probably the biggest in Tete province and the country,” based on preliminary studies already carried out.

According to Mozambican daily newspaper Notícias, Chingodozi airport in 2009 benefited from significant investments, including assembling VOR equipment, as well as modernisation of its control tower.

At the moment Riversdale Mining has 22 mining licenses in Tete, one of which, the Benga project, is due to start exporting coal in the third quarter of 2011. (macauhub) 

Whirlwind tour of Tete continued...

Le Petit Cafe - the best bakery & coffee shop in town.

Inside Le Petit Cafe.

A typical street in the centre of Tete.

Another street in downtown Tete.

One of many abandoned buildings.

A new building being erected - notice the "scaffolding"!

Abandoned administrative building.

Site of the new hotel (The Rezidor Park Inn).

My favourite of all the buildings... I wonder what
 it could have been? A school perhaps?

One of the flee, tick & mange infested packs of
stray dogs. I would happily put them all out of
 their misery myself, but apparently they're
the only thing that keeps the rat population
in check. Poor things!

An abandoned home in suburban Tete.

The flat where I might live.

Tete's fresh produce market beneath the famous bridge.

Fresh, organic, colourful fruit & veg. Yum!

Market stalls.

Whirlwind tour of Tete (June 2010)

When I traveled to Tete to see my boyfriend in June this year we spent most of our time in neighboring Malawi, up at Chembe Eagle's Nest on the lake, which was wonderful! The two days we spent in Tete consisted very much of a whirlwind tour of the town, with me taking copious numbers of photo's, and eating LOTS of seafood. Yummy! 


I keep going back over the photo's I took looking for details I might have missed while there, pondering who or what could exist beyond the cement and mortar of each building, wondering if I will one day meet any of the subjects in the photo's, and  running through scenarios of what my new life up there will be like. Here is a small sample of the pics. They should start to give you an idea of what the hot, dusty, busy, lazy, frontier-town of Tete looks like.

From Hotel Zambezi looking North

From Hotel Zambezi looking North-East towards the river

From Hotel Zambezi looking South-East towards the river

From Hotel Zambezi looking South

Hotel Zambezi

"Polly" the Hotel's resident cockatoo who we rescued from being
traumatized & blinded by two idiot maintenance staff using an angle-
grinder to remove part of her cage while she was still inside it!!!

Yours truely in the Hotel's restuarant

Hotel Zambezi bar/ cigar lounge

More to follow...