Olumbi, Olumbe, Olombe, what’s this village called? I don’t dare ask how to spell it…

I’m careful not to say it to my travelling companions, but until now everything has gone well, too well…

And in fact at Olumbe, a fishing village on the sea coast, there’s a wild wind. The wind is a problem for the backdrops. Two sheets, six metres by three, hanging on an iron pipe structure, if the wind is strong they create the effect of a dangerous sail, dangerous for the actors who act in front of them and for the audience.

We park the cars behind the backdrops to create some protection against the wind, we tie some safety ropes between the cars and the structure. Then I tell Agostinho, a practicing Catholic, to pray.

How many theatre troupes have found themselves in the position of being followed by a crowd of exultant children in an isolated village in Mozambique after performing?

I don’t know, but it happened to us.

The performance ends, we dismantle the scenery and the sound equipment, and we load everything into the pick-up. The whole operation is carried out, just like the other days, with every person in the audience still sitting, and watching us. The first children came when we arrived this morning and they followed all through the preparations, today at Olumbe there were even some people selling peanuts, drinks and fish.

They go away only when we leave. And maybe when we are far away, they will applaud.

But no. We leave with the vehicles and a group of children run after us.

We deviate in the forest to go round a large puddle of rainwater, we return to the main road and a flood of children and youngsters appear, running behind us.

I took a good look: they were smiling, they weren’t making fun of us…

The “Theatre so good” tour couldn’t end in a better way.

I visited the Health Centre in the village of Olumbe. It’s small, clean, tidy, well supplied, at least it seems to be because I see boxes of medicine, but it’s small, too small. And everything’s small, even the wash-hand basin…

I noticed that immediately, do you know those small wash-hand basins? Well, that’s the one used in the village Health Centre, thousands of inhabitants.

While returning to Palma, I thought about technology and what could be useful: mobile wash-hand basins. A basin installed on a trolley with wheels and two tanks, one above filled with clean water and one below to collect the dirty water used in the wash-hand basin. It could be made of stainless steel, easier to disinfect and indestructible, it wouldn’t need any power, the water comes out of the tap by gravity and again by gravity collects in the tank below.

Thanks to the wheels it could be moved from “ward” to “ward” (I use inverted commas because it’s hard to talk about wards here…) and I don’t think it would cost much to make. Mobile wash-hand basins, I have to write it down!