My Not-So-Glorious Return to Maputo (a.k.a. Some Perils of Traveling in Mozambique)

Hello all. Sorry it’s been a while… I have been a bit overwhelmed as of late to put it mildly. But I figure you are all just dying (ha, ha) to hear more ridiculous accounts of my ridiculous life here in Mozambique. In lieu of recapitulating about the last month or so I want to tell you a story about my viagem (trip) to Maputo last week.

Life in Mozambique is never boring, but ESPECIALLY not when you are traveling. I was set to head to Maputo for a training in Behavior Change Communication put on by the CDC and GHC in partnership with Peace Corps. I planned on dilly-dallying my way down the country, stretching the 1000-km journey into either two or three days, but I received the exciting news last week that my friend Lis, who was in South Africa, would be able to come and visit me in Mozambique! So I headed down on Sunday with the hopes of meeting up with her when her bus got in around 5PM.

So these last weeks were school ferias (holidays) and what do you do over the holidays? Go to the beach, right? And I live in the beach site slash Las Vegas of Mozambique, so there was a bevy of volunteers from all over Moz in my town (and my house!) hanging out and enjoying some relaxation. I said my prayers and left my house in the care of a dozen drunk PCVs (I say that lovingly. I was happy to let people stay in my house) to head for the bus to Maputo. Direct bus, Vilanculos to Maputo, no problems. Right? Wrong. I didn’t even make it out of town before the drama started. The Maputo bus goes daily and they usually say it’s at 3:30 or 4. (Last time I took it, I was told to be there at 3:00AM for a 3:30 departure. It left at 5. This is the norm.) So the driver told me to show up at 4 em punto and after about an hour of haphazard and unsatisfying sleep I trucked out with my overpacked backpack, Simba, and two fellow PCVs who were kind enough to walk me out to the bus despite being deliriously sleep-deprived. I reach the corner of the market at about 3:57am… no bus. But not panicking… maybe I just can’t see it? Nope, its not there. We arrive at the corner at 4AM em punto and of course, no bus. A few other locals are standing around there and say that the bus has already left. Great. This leaves me my only option of trying to hitchhike 1000ks in one day before dark by myself with my valuables. Um, no way would I do that outside of a life-or-death situation. Several minutes later some dude (that is the best way I can describe him) tells us the bus is coming back. Sure it is. So I stand there with my confused dog and my two poor friends until about 4:45 when the bus decides to return. Of course now it is pretty much full including the seat I had reserved for myself yesterday. And I did not want to check my backpack with my laptop computer into the bowels of the bus, never to be seen again. The door opens and the cobrador greets me with a snarky “você demorou MUUUUITO” aka I was really late. Um, no. I began an indignant rant in Portuguese about how I was there before and that he was lying and they left early and now my seat was gone. Unfazed, obvi. So I climb onto the bus and get to share a seat with my backpacking bag, a Mozambican woman and her four picnic baskets full of various items, and her two infants. Okay, fine. T.I.A., I am flexible, personal space smershonal space, whatevs. I was singing a different tune about four hours in when the kid who was basically sitting in my lap pooped in his pants… twice. (This was determined by the woman lifting the kid’s crotchal region up towards her nose, pulling down his pants and taking a big sniff. Mmm, fetid odor.)

Somehow I make it down to Maputo with no passport checks, no blown tires, no baby poo actually on me and a shred of dignity remaining. Oh! But one more thing. One of the best things about travel in Moz is that whenever your bus/chapa stops, millions (okay, dozens) of locals will run up and try to sell you anything imaginable. (Need some clothespins for the road? Actually, with the way that baby smelled, they might have been helpful…) Many places produce honey locally and I was excited when a criança (child) banged on my window with a huge bottle of honey, bees and honeycomb on the top and all. Enthusiastically, I buy it without realizing that I am resigning myself to not only needing to protect a glass bottle of sticky, ant-attracting, viscous liquid for an entire week of traveling, but also that the bottle in question was a familiar brand of Whisky that is about the same color of the honey. No matter…

I finally arrive in Maputo at the hell on earth we know as Junta and get off and start looking for a chapa to take me into town to a hotel I have never been to before. I am getting quite some looks at this point as a mulungu walking around junta… with what everyone assumes is a huge bottle of whisky in my hand. Great. I get on a chapa and everyone is pointing and laughing and talking in Changana, of which I know none so I just sat there like an idiot. The cobrador kept asking me about the whisky and other nonsense I didn’t actually understand. Yipes. I am the target of many a what I can only assume was a mean joke, me and my whisky and my huge backpack and bad Portuguese. I finally make it to the hostel, The Base, which I really recommend. It is really cute, affordable and a beautiful view, and the guy who works there is super nice (and insisted on speaking to me in Portuguese, which I appreciated after the severe blow to my ego that was my chapa ride). Lis makes it in. Successos! Okay, a few bumps here and there, but otherwise all right.

I had a day til the BCC training started so I used it catching up with Lis slash dragging her all around Maputo with me, where I succeeded in buying a few of those priceless commodities that only Maputo can really offer (a bagel with cream cheese at Café Sol, tiny hand weights and new cheapo plasticware at Chinese Wal-Mart, and two cans of Nutella at Hiper that were only 40.00 meticais cada… who cares that it expired last week??) and eating falafel and ice cream (YUM! I am with some serious saudades de ice cream) at Maputo Shopping Center. Then came time to check into Cardoso. All I can say is… HOT SHOWERS. I will never ever in the rest of my life take a hot shower for granted. So nice. Rivaling the showers was the unlimited buffet meals I got to eat for four days which resulted in me gaining about five pounds but was totally worth it to have chocolate mousse and a ginormous bowl of fruit at every meal.

The training was pretty cool, talking about barriers and facilitators of behavior change specifically in the health sector, and some different activities that we can implement with our focus groups. A highlight was a little theater about sex/condoms put on by a group of volunteers that I cant even try to explain, because it won’t actually be funny. Anyway.

I was able to spend some quality time with some of my closest friends in PC/Moz so that was really fun, and also got to see a bunch of other volunteers who were in town as well. We went out one night and saw some live music. The only big damper on the whole thing was that I came down with the Migraine of Death. I wish I could say I was exaggerating but a partir de Tuesday until pretty much Sunday I felt like I was getting stabbed in the forehead repeatedly. Nothing like taking a couple Advil or Aleve, drinking water, settling down for a long night of rest and feeling WORSE in the morning. So that was pretty miserable and slightly hindered my ability to enjoy Maputo but since I spent a month´s “salary” in the one week I was there, it was probably for the best.

Friday morning, still feeling horrible, I saddled up with Lis, Amy and her friend to make the trip back to Vilanculos. Traveling hasn’t been the smoothest process lately, so who was I kidding that the trip back would be different? We arrive at Junta about 5:15AM. The direct bus to Vilanculos usually leaves around 530 or 6, but it can leave as early as 5. We get there and of course, “ja saiu.” It already left. AWESOME. Isn’t there another bus? No. Is there an Inhassoro bus? No. Double awesome. Okay, T.I.A., its okay we will get home somehow! Amy and Michael were going to Inhambane City so, let´s just go with the flow, it will be cool for Lis to see I´Bane and then we can ferry/chapa home.

It was not meant to be.

We had to wait for the bus to fill up, and after getting on at 5:30 we left a bit after 7. My favorite part of all this is that as we are finally pulling out, I see a Vilanculos bus AND an Inhassoro bus pulling out. Aka, a ride home. Figures. Oh well! Bad weather prolonged our trip, which was made even better by the fact that I was involuntarily crying/shaking half the trip expecting my head to actually explode. (Spoiler alert: it didn’t!) This ends up with us arriving in I´Bane about 3:30PM. Ha. Okay, so we probably aren’t going home. We grab some delicious food and hot chocolate (me)/beers (the others) at Verdinho´s and wander through the Inhambane market, where I at long last spend the 25 meticais (one dollar) on a straw purse to put my whiskey/honey in (yes, I have been carrying it this WHOLE time). We take the new and improved ferry over to Maxixe which was a long shot from sitting on one of those dhow boats that took an hour and a half to fill up and while it went across the bay the engine would die a minimum of six times and it was more likely than not that someone would scoop some water out of the bottom at some point… development IS happening! We hunker down (haha. That phrase) at Campismo for the night, roll out of bed for breakfast (poor Amy had ROUS´s-Princess Bride anyone?-running around her feet… always keeps it exciting) and then start trying to get a ride out. We get into the cab of some semi truck, all four of us, which is slow-moving of course. Get dropped off at Pambarra and get a chapa in with people trying to of course, rip me off and then I yelled at them in Portuguese about not giving me the Mulungu Price and then they laughed about this and (assumedly) made fun of us the entire 15K into town. Just get me home already please.

Finally, everything got sorted and I was able to hang out with Lis and force her to eat Matapa at Alemanha, went horseback riding on the beach and watched Twilight and laughed at all the brooding… she is back home today, I will miss her terribly but it was so nice to see her and she put up with a lot! I was proud of her. Africa thickens your skin. Its back to the grind for me for three weeks before I take a “vacation” of sorts up to visit a friend. Woohoo!

This is really long so no one probably read all of it, but all I can say is: I am going to be a much more laid-back person when I go home. And next time you are pulling your hair out while sitting in 405 rush hour traffic or cursing the world when your flight gets delayed AGAIN, just remember: you could be sharing your seat with a backpack, four picnic baskets, a woman and a baby who’s pooping on you. Haha. I love Africa.

Oh Maputo. Always an adventure...Thanks for visiting, Lis!