So where did I leave off? I know I left this blog with a bit of a cliffhanger in my last entry and I’m sure that all of you have probably been losing sleep night after night because of this. So in order to cause no further agony, and to allow you all to carry on with your normal life of eating and sleeping I will jump right into this blog entry. In case you forgot (since it’s been like 3 weeks and you presumably haven’t been sleeping or eating) let me set the stage again…
It had been raining all week. The 25km road to get out of Mangunde and arrive at the national highway had transformed from a rugged dirt road to a perilously flooded mud road. My plans had been to leave Mangunde on a Friday afternoon and make it to the provincial capital, Chimoio, that night and then board a 3am chapa Saturday morning headed North to Tete city, about 6 hours away. I would spend the weekend there with friends and return to Mangunde on Monday. Because of the insidious whims of Mother Nature and her powerful rain clouds, however, this plan was now in grave jeopardy. I spent most of the day Thursday like a father in the waiting room of a maternity ward, pacing and awaiting any news of a car leaving the mission. The clock was ticking. What was the doctor doing in that room? A nurse came out and gave the first piece of bad news. There had been a complication. Brother Antonio, who had tried to leave in a mission jeep early that morning rolled back into the mission 5 hours later looking defeated. He had made it about 2km before slipping off the road and getting stuck in a muddy ditch. The tractor had to come rescue him and pull his car out of the ditch. Strike one. 2pm…3pm…4pm came and went fleetingly by, each minute putting another nail in the coffin of my naïve dreams. This is a fact: it takes at least 4 hours to get to Chimoio and catching chapas from the main road becomes exceedingly difficult after dark. 4:30, two hours until nightfall, we heard a motor revving in front of our house; it was a mission vehicle packed like Chuckie Cheese’s on a Friday night with people from the school and villages who were also trying to leave. Mr. Pray, we’re going to try to give it a shot and get this baby out. I was game. I chucked my bag in the back and jumped in the jeep. The driver gunned it on the gas and we were out of there, fully expecting to get stuck about 2km in and then have to wait another 5 hours into the night for the tractor to come pick us up.
The rain had died down a bit, but the road was still treacherous. As the driver carefully navigated the terrain, we often found ourselves stopped with the tires kicking out mud helplessly, but just when I thought it was game over, the wheels would find some divine source of traction and haul us out of the rut. At other times, we would find ourselves spinning off the road sideways, but the driver always found a way to expertly crank the wheel left or right and put us back on track. As we drove ourselves out of more and more seemingly desperate binds, I became more confident that we might just get out of there after all. About an hour and 25km later, when we emerged from the fog and mud and turned right onto the national highway, we had made it. Your baby was delivered safely, Mr. Pray, congratulations! Let’s not get too optimistic yet though; there was still work to be done.
It was now nearly 6pm, the sun was setting, and I still had to catch two chapas at night and travel 3 hours to get to Chimoio. Hmm. I have to say, I was not optimistic. I had conceded to myself that, well, it was remarkable to just get out of there for starters. It could take me two hours just to catch the first chapa to take me the first leg of my upcoming journey. By then it would be 8pm and dangerous to be out on the road, all my plans would be foiled and I would be stuck somewhere on a Mozambican highway. Now, I don’t generally believe in fate or divine intervention, but what happened next seemed to be almost too good to be true. Within 30 seconds of standing on the side of the road a chapa drove by which I flagged down. Hoping that he could at least take me to Inchope, the next town two hours up the road from where I could pick up another chapa to take me the rest of the way, I asked him where he was heading. The driver told me that he was headed to Inchope first (score!!), then on to Chimoio that night (What?! Double score!!!), and then was heading up to Tete city at 3am the next morning (Get out!! That’s ridiculous!!! That’s exactly what I wanted to do). Suddenly my naïve and ambitious plan to make it 9 hours to Tete city for a 3 day weekend seemed like it might actually happen. I was beside myself with disbelief. What luck! What’s more is that this unlikely chapa was not even full, or close to full. There were only about 5 passengers in a van that usually seats 16 comfortably and 25 uncomfortably. The driver was driving right past people trying to flag him down on the road; it was as if he didn’t want to pick up anymore people. This does not happen. If there is one thing I know about chapa drivers it is that they will do anything to pocket another 20mts and fit another passenger into an already packed bus, but this was like my own personal cab all of the way to Tete. It was such a bizarre circumstance that I couldn’t help but think it was some kind of scheme to rob and murder me and the 4 other unsuspecting passengers who were getting the joy ride of their lives. But, thankfully, we arrived in Chimoio that night unharmed, with the promise that if we showed up again at 2:30 in the morning we would be on our way to Tete city before we knew it.
Well, if only life were that simple. I paid the driver 500mts in advance for a seat on the upcoming 3am chapa and went to find some friends at a nearby bar to pass the next few hours before heading back to the bus stop in the wee hours of the morning. When I got back to the bus stop promptly at 2:30am, I was sleep-deprived and a little tipsy, but I couldn’t help but notice that there was nothing there. I saw a couple of empty chapas, and there were a few homeless people sleeping on the sidewalk, but other than that, the area was completely deserted. After almost an hour waiting there in the dark, a few groggy passengers started to filter into the area. We had all already paid for our tickets and were curious where this shady driver had absconded to. We started pounding on the chapa windows and found the cobrador (the money collector that sits in the chapas) sleeping in the back. He confusedly woke up from his slumber, wondering what all of the hubbub was about. When told him that we had paid for tickets for a bus that was supposed to leave at 3am, not at 5am and he seemed utterly dumbfounded. Apparently the driver was nowhere to be found and the money we had paid him, which we were demanding back at this point, was at the local bar with our AWOL driver. This is when things got interesting. One of the passengers who had also just returned from the bar was a little more agitated by this disappearing act than the rest of us and decided to take matters into his own hands. He was demanding that the helpless cobrabor return our money and was adamant that he would not take no for an answer. After some verbal sparring, it finally turned into an old fashioned show down, with the passenger grabbing the cobrador by the collar, yelling in his face, and slapping him upside the head continually. When that didn’t work my fellow passenger began reaching into the chapa window to pull out and throw down all of the pineapples that the driver had bought on the way up. It was on. At this point I was pretty awake and kind of excited to see what would happen next. If you know me, you know that I generally don’t get involved in these kinds of altercations, but I did the best I could to show my support for the drunk guy laying into the lazy cobrador who wouldn’t give us our money back. Every once in awhile I would chime in, “Yeah, you said we were leaving at 3, it’s almost 5 now!” and then I would fade back into the crowd. I did my part. Just when things were getting exciting, however, our absconding driver finally showed up from the bar 2 hours late, chugged the rest of the bottle of wine he had, and revved the engine to signal that we were off!
The driver and his eager co-pilot, having just come from a night in the bar, decided that it would be fun to blast a mix of rap and Mozambican dance music at 5am on their new woofers. Hooray. I was just happy that we were finally on the road. The first few hours of the trip were pretty smooth, minus the lack of sleep and the blaring music of course, but then things got kind of ridiculous again, as they tend to do on the roads of this country. There are always a number of police checkpoints that you have to get through on the major highways which I’ve never had any problems with, but you never know when you might come across an opportunistic cop who sees white people in a chapa and thinks “money.” On one particular stop the officer, toting an AK-47, asked for my passport and was checking it much more scrupulously than usual. After a few minutes of careful investigation he asked me to step out of the chapa and informed me that my visa was expired…which it was, thanks Peace Corps. He made sure to be as condescending as possible in spelling out to me in English that we are now in the year 2011, and a visa for 2010 is no longer applicable. Thank you Officer, I wasn’t aware what year it was. Luckily, while I didn’t have it with me, my 2011 visa was in processing at the capital, and I had an official receipt which explained that I, indeed, was legal in this country. When I showed it to the cop, however, he emphatically denied that this meant anything at all, “this is just a piece of paper, what does this mean? Anyone could print this out anywhere.” Hmmm. Then he asked me whether I had my “exit form” for leaving the province without an official visa. This is when I knew he was full of shit. You don’t need an exit form every time you leave the province. I didn’t really know what to do about it, though. After all, he had the badge and the AK. So I decided to just kind of look at him and not say anything. This, surprisingly, was a pretty effective strategy. The chapa driver was honking his horn at this point and wanting to get on the road again, and the corrupt cop’s partner was looking down clearly embarrassed by the conduct of his partner. Under this pressure, the officer made one last attempt, “How about a couple of beers for me and my buddies?” I almost laughed at this plea, but was able to restrain myself, and, given its previous success, I decided to continue with the silent stare strategy. It wasn’t long before he gave me my papers back empty-handed and let me get back into the chapa. Success!
The next stop we had on this ridiculous variety show of a chapa ride was a disease control station. Apparently there had been some recently reported cases of Cholera in the area and officials were afraid of a Cholera outbreak spreading through the country. Quick blurb about Cholera – it’s a bacterial infection that spreads through fecal contamination in water. If you get it, you essential get explosive diarrhea so intense that you can die in 24 hours. Ouch. So I wasn’t such was this “disease control” station actually had in store for us. At first I though that they were administering some kind of vaccine or prophylaxis to everyone that passed by this road, and I was worried about PC medical clearance because we’re not allowed to get treatment from anyone other that PC medical staff. I soon found out, however, that I had nothing to worry about. What had at first appeared to be a sophisticated disease control center defended by armed police turned out to be no more than a jug of water and floor mat. Stand on the mat, run water over your hands, and get back in the chapa; no soap, no antibacterial lotion, just water and a floor mat. It was classic. I hope the water was at least treated. I couldn’t help but get a kick out of that.
Well, after all of those distractions we were back on the road and were nearly to our destination. There were only a few more stops in store for us. At one point, the passenger sitting next to me yelled parragem, the word for stop, in what seemed to be the middle of nowhere. There was a village a few miles away, but other than that it was just bushes and a few sparse trees. He informed us all that he had been herding goats out in these parts last week and had lost his wallet. Thus, like any efficient public transportation service would do, we stopped the chapa and all got out to look for his wallet for 20 minutes. Not surprisingly, we were not successful in finding the poor man’s wallet as he no idea where it fell out of his pocket.
One thing that our chapa driver did not stop for was the dog that he nailed in the middle of the street. Yeah. I could tell that the driver’s buzz was wearing off because he was getting pretty accurate at trying to hit every animal that dared cross the road in front of us. He seemed to be gunning for goats, dogs and chickens like it was a video game and he got points for tagging them. Luckily, he was generally unsuccessful in hitting the unsuspecting animals, but there was one dog that was not so lucky. It just stood there like a dear in headlights in the middle of the road. It had plenty of time to get out of the way, but the driver was probably going 60 or so and didn’t even consider braking. In fact, it felt like we sped up as we neared our unlucky victim. I’ve never straight up run over a body before, but I have to say I was surprised by how smooth it was. One tire, then the second, the dog didn’t even have time to yelp. It was actually very sad and pretty disturbing at the time, but you get used to everyone hating dogs here pretty quickly. I’m a dog guy, but I don’t even like dogs here. They’re everywhere, they get into your garbage, they fight, they’re always dying of starvation, and they’re so mistreated by people that they’re very hostile to the point where I’m even afraid to walk by some dogs. I’m not justifying it, but I’m just saying that people should keep their goats, chickens and dogs off of the national highway. I don’t know how evolution allowed a herd of goats to think that resting for the afternoon in the middle of the national highway is a successful survival strategy. Every time I travel, we have to come to a complete stop, honk incessantly and nudge 50 goats off of the road because they decided to camp out on hot pavement for an afternoon siesta. I don’t get it.
Anyway, let me wrap this journey up, because my account of it is become as long and tortuous as the event itself. I finally made it into Tete city, Hallelujah, and was able to meet up with my friends by noon on Saturday.
Here is the ironic part of this whole journey: in the days preceding my journey, I had been fighting off a minor cold/fever thing that I was able to live through. As soon as I got to their house on Saturday, however, whatever sickness had been growing inside of me the last few days came out of its cage in full force. I said hi to my friends and then proceeded to spend rest of that day alternating between the bedroom and the bathroom. It was not a pretty sight. There I was, visiting for 2 days only and I spent the first of my two days listening to the party from a bedroom loaded up on Peptol, Tylenol and Immodium. I must say, drinking the night before and then proceeding to go 30 hours with no sleep probably did not help my cause. It was a learning experience. Luckily I was able to pull myself together enough on Sunday to enjoy the day with my friends and actually eat some of the delicious food that they were preparing. That pizza and birthday cake were so good that I think I would’ve eaten them even if I was dying of Cholera. At some point, you reach a decision that some foods are so good that you are willing to deal with the consequences of eating them, whatever those consequences may be. I had eaten so many plates of beans and rice the past month that when the pizza and cake were on the table I actually think I saw them glowing like you would a diamond in a cartoon. It was surreal.
I had a wonderful weekend though, and on Monday, which seemed too soon, I packed up my things at the crack of dawn and loaded up for what would be another 9 hour adventure on Mozambican roads. My journey back wasn’t quite as eventful as my journey up, but it did have its share of unique personalities. That afternoon I made it all the way to Muxungue, the town just down the 25km dirt road from my home, Mangunde. Despite all of the good luck I had had that day, however, it appeared that my luck had run out. It was around 6pm and getting dark. By the time I got there, there were no more mission cars heading into the Mangunde that day. I would have to spend the night in Muxungue and get home the next morning. To finish off the story, a very friendly man I met on the chapa offered me some sardines and xima and space on the floor of his hut in Muxungue for the night so I passed the night there and caught an early morning ride back to the mission on Tuesday…
…Phew! What a journey! And all that for just a 2 day vacation. Well, I’m going to leave my blog entry at that for now. For any of you who made it this far, thanks for sticking with me. To give you a minor update about other things in the world and my life I will most certainly post again sooner rather than later. It has been 3 weeks since my journey up to Tete and a lot has happened. I’m now fully into a rhythm here at school with a whole month of teaching under my belt. Life here is slow at times, and way too busy at other times. It is definitely a balancing act 24/7.
I hope that all is well with everyone at home. The Packers won the Super Bowl, as I’m sure you guys probably heard!!!! I wish I could have been there to enjoy the celebration. I hear that there are some riots going on in Madison around now. It sounds like things are getting pretty intense on the home front. I would love to hear from you guys individually about how you are all doing back in the states. It’s been awhile since I’ve heard from friends and family back at home, so feel free to email me anytime you want!
Ok, take care, and happy valentine’s day!
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