Admittedly this post isn’t very sentimental but it’s might be interesting for some of you (for instance Sue will be glad to know I drank water, Pam will think the toilet paper bit is funny, mom likes pictures and Simon will be glad to know that the average bitrate for video was fairly high).  If you’re wondering who in the world would keep track of stuff like this, I would.  I kept an itemized budget because I was curious to see what it takes to live in Mozambique.  Keep in mind that most days I ate on base which was provided free.  I also lived on base so I had no housing expense.  The categories I chose are pretty general.  Mostly “Social” means eating out.  Almost all of my social expense was in the first month after I arrived;  I found that eating with the kids was valuable time, if not for me then for them.  The “Home” category includes miscellaneous expenses like airport fees as well as items like soap, phone minutes and paying the laundry lady I hired.  Forty dollars in the “Home” category comes from buying a mobile phone.  This expense also accounts for the maximum peaks below on the one week moving average (green line) and the running estimate of total spending (purple line):

Pemba Spending (click to enlarge)

The blue + symbols show the amount I spent on a given day (I didn’t spend anything on the days the blue marks are on the bottom).  The green line and the green numbers on the left are running weekly average, which means the past 7 days are added up and divided by 7.  You can see that this gives a more accurate view of daily spending than the daily blue marks.  The purple line and numbers on the right are a running estimate for how much I would spend based on my spending history to date.  These are simple but useful algorithms that I won’t write here because this post is already dry enough.  You can email me.  You can also email me if you want to see  complete itemized spending (for instance if you’re planning a trip to Mozambique).

Bottom Line: I lived on about $7/day.  Take out gifts (haha, yeah right), social outings and my mobile phone purchase and I’m down to $3.27.  For comparison South Africa is costing me about $60/day.

I spent less than I had planned.  I expect I’m on the very low end of what’s normal for visitor there.  Here’s a few more bits from Mozambique that you might enjoy:

• Days before budget estimates stay within ±15% of actual spending: 25 days
• Average Water Intake: 3.27 Liters/Day
• Sick Days: 2
• Rolls of Toilet Paper Used:  2.5 (And Pam, it was mostly healthly)
• Bars of Soap Used: 1.5
• Deodorant: < 1 Stick (What, you got a problem?)
• Total TrekScratch Mozambique Posts: 30
• Total Comments on Mozambique Posts: 185 (Thanks!)
• Of These, 157 are by girls, and 28 are by guys, couples or families (…thanks?!!?)
• Legitimate Emails Received in Mozambique: 381 (not including TrekScratch notifications)
• Emails Sent: 184 (Internet happened on my front porch at 4 or 5 am)

Photography:

• Photographs Taken: 3030
• Total Data: 11.8 GB
• Average: 3.89 MB/Photograph

Movies: (if you must be pedantic, it’s video…but I like the way “movies” sounds)

• Movies Taken: 1180
• Total Data: 231.16 GB (including thumbnails and cache)
• Total Duration: 19 hours 46 minutes
• Average Clip Length: 1.01 minutes
• Average Bitrate: 23.34 Mbit (not including thumbnails and cache)

Flights: (Entire Trip)

• Distance from Home: 16,040 km (~10,400 miles)
  (as the transatlantic crow flies, just above sea level)
• Distance Flown: More than 41,000 km (~25,480 miles)
• Time in the Air: 52 hours 35 minutes

So that’s that.  The only other interesting bit is that I’ve managed to fill my passport entirely, possibly without duplicates.  I am blessed that my South African Visa from November is still valid.  The last two pages are a total stamp fest.