It's 7 o'clock in the evening and it is pitch black. Although I know there will be a moon later,
the weather is chilly and overcast, so not even the familiar forms of stars in
the night sky are visible. When I rub my
hands together I can still feel the dust of daytime layering my skin. Now, in the cool darkness, the dust is
settling, but earlier in the day it had been flying freely, billowing into
unprotected eyes, and giving a fresh layer of brown to anyone bold even to have
bathed or washed clothes that morning.
The landscape this time of year, August in Mozambique, is a monotone
brown and the Mozambicans, with their already cracked and coffee colored skin,
blend in to the landscape.
I sit down on top of my bag and begin something that I’ve become adept
at in the past year and a half in Mozambique—waiting. I have just come from Maputo, the capital
city, on a twelve hour bus ride and have been dropped off at the intersection
to my school. Here I must wait for a car
from my school, a private catholic mission, to make the 25km trek from the
mission out to the intersection to pick me up, along with the other patients
that are waiting to be brought in to the hospital.
This is not explicitly a new experience for me. Every time I enter the mission I am forced to
play this waiting game. One generally
tries to arrive as early as possible to the intersection and waits anywhere
from 15 minutes to 6 hours for a car to appear through the dust. What is unique about today, however, is that
I arrived to the intersection after dark.
When I arrived, it was 6 p.m. and the sun was bending around the horizon
and coating the landscape in a fading yellow light. Now, at 7 p.m. all vestiges of light are gone
and I’m sitting in darkness. There is no electricity here which means there are
no street lights, lit houses, or blaring music.
Save for a cooking fire at a home across the street and the whispers of
a few scant conversations, it is eerily quiet and dark as I wait.
Locals say that this is not a good idea.
The darkness in Mozambique is owned by bandits, thieves, and, worst of
all, evil spirits. Sitting there on the
road in the dark, one is disposed to the whims of all three. Unfortunately, on this night, I have no
choice. I must wait until a car
comes. Thus, I lean back onto my bag and
let my imagination wander. My mind
drifts to the trip I am now returning from: a four week break from school which
included a long and arduous journey through the burnt Mozambican landscape on
foot, the climbing of the tallest mountain in Mozambique, and a visit from my
parents in the States.
It all began on the last week of school in the second trimester. The idea had been smoldering in my mind for a
year and a half now, ever since I arrived in Mangunde. I wanted to walk to Dombe. Dombe is a town with a school in the
neighboring province of Manica where two other Peace Corps volunteers live and
teach. By car, one has to follow the
tortuous whims of African roads and the trip could be 200 kilometers and take
five or six hours. Students have told
me, however, that there is a shortcut.
If we cut across the river and veer directly west out of the mission
instead of taking the road to the east and curving back around, we could cut
the distance in half and walk there in two days.
Adding to the quixotic allure of such a trip, there is a legend that any
volunteer who has lived in Mangunde knows well.
You only have to be in Mangunde a few days before you will surely hear
an older student or another professor drop the names “Teacher James” followed
by his impressive list of accomplishments achieved here in Mangunde. James was one of the first Peace Corps
volunteers to arrive at Mangunde and the only volunteer thus far to extend for
a third year here. He is revered for his
impact on the community and remembered with a demigod-like zeal among his
former acquaintances. When listing his
résumé, people will often mention most importantly that James once rode his
bicycle all the way to Dombe in one day.
It always stuck in my mind as something I would like to do. As my bicycle grew into further disrepair,
however, and the weekends filled with project activities and schoolwork, the
thought drifted out of my head at some point and I resigned to be vanquished
again by Teacher James.
Just when I had forgotten about my ambition to make it to Dombe, fate
took a sudden turn in my direction. The
Ministry of Education decided last minute and without warning to push forward
by two weeks the school break that separates the second and third
trimesters. I had planned for my parents
to come visit during the school break and their plane tickets had already been
purchased for the two weeks in which the previous break had been. Now, however, school was getting out early
and I had two weeks to kill with no plans.
Mike and I seized the opportunity to plan a long awaited journey; a
journey that would not only best the deified James, but also give us an
opportunity to discover the unique Mozambican landscape and become acquainted
with people far removed from the relative bubble of development that exists
here on the mission.
We quickly devised a plan and, like a climbing expedition preparing for
Everest, we assembled a team of skilled accomplices. First, we would need a guide. While I knew roughly the direction that Dombe
was in, I had never walked more than an hour or two away from the mission in
either direction, and if we were going to try to reach Dombe, we would need a
local who has walked there before.
Luckily, my good friend and counterpart for my JUNTOS youth group,
Alberto, was the man for the job. After
talking to him about our expedition, I found out that when Alberto was a child,
he had fled from the war on foot into Zimbabwe via the same path that we were
planning on using to get to Dombe, and claimed to know the area well. In addition, Alberto also had a sister that
currently lived on the path to Dombe, roughly halfway to our destination where
we would be able to spend the night on our way.
When other Peace Corps volunteers got wind of our proposed voyage, they
quickly showed interest, and, before we knew it, we were a cohort of eight men,
packing our bags for the journey across Mozambique. Comprising our team were Dylan (D-train) and
David (Marshall) from Estaquinha, Mac (Mac Daddy) and Micah (The Cleveland
Steamer) from Machanga, Mike and I from Mangunde, our trusty guide Alberto, and
a student named Agostinho making his way home to Dombe for the holidays. The night before the trip we all gathered at
Mangunde and consolidated our resources.
We would need enough food and water to get us through at least two days
of hiking through the dry African bush.
We filled our bags with water bottles, cans of tuna, bread, and oranges
and, at 5 a.m. the next morning we set out through the morning fog for Dombe.
Not 15 minutes into our hike and we came to our first challenge. We would have to cross the crocodile infested
waters of the Buzi River. Students from
the boarding school often bathed in the river and claimed to know the areas
which were safe from the dangerous crocodiles.
We stepped cautiously, however, into the knee-deep water of the Buzi and
waded through, our eyes darting around for suspicious looking logs and movement
in the reeds. After we had reached the
far bank, I told the others of my first day in Mangunde, when I visited the
local clinic and saw two young boys bandaged from head to toe after having been
attacked by crocodiles while crossing the river at the very same location.
After the Buzi River, we had nothing but the dry inhospitable African
landscape in between us and Dombe.
Alberto told us that we wouldn’t see another river until we arrived in
Dombe some 100 kilometers in front of us.
So we walked. We walked out of
the chiefdom of Mangunde and into the chiefdom of Dongonda. After Dongonda we would enter Gunye, where we
were planning to spend the first night.
As we walked Alberto explained to me the system of governance in rural
Mozambique. The country of Mozamibique,
which is twice the size of California, is broken into 10 provinces which are,
in turn, divided into districts. Within
each district there are various chiefdoms each with their respective chief who
represents them. In the more urban and
developed areas of Mozambique, the chiefs are largely ceremonial and the power
is wielded from the elected government positions – the president, governors,
and administrators – in rural areas like Dongonda and Mangunde, however, the
central government is all but absent, and the authority in each community is
exercised by the chief within his chiefdom.
Places like Dongonda and Mangunde hardly ever see the government or the
government’s money. As we walked and
tired, step after step, we saw how true this was. For almost six hours we walked without seeing
a town, school, health clinic or even a water pump. The population in these stretches was
understandably scant with such a scarcity of water. Every hour or so we would pass by a traveler
on his bicycle with two 20-liter jerry-cans strapped to the back of his bike,
or a small group of women walking with a basin of clothes or a jerry-can of
water on their heads. I always asked
Alberto where they were coming from and where they were going, and he would
respond that they were bringing water home from the nearest pump, in some
cases, up to two hours away on a bicycle.
In the late afternoon, after ten hours or so of walking, we came to our
first water pump. The sun was already
beginning to set and we could anticipate that we were approaching something
important by the increased density of people we began to pass. Suddenly, there were crowds of women with
jugs of water on their heads walking adroitly by us, their bodies floating by
statuesquely to balance the water, but the faces animatedly gossiping about
this or that; kids scampering by us throwing rocks into massanica trees to try to coax the unripe fruits free for an
afternoon snack; and bicyclists whizzing by on the dirt path ringing their
bells for us to make space in the road for them to pass.
As we neared the water pump people had no idea how to react to us. Everything about us was ostentatious and we
had no way of blending in. We were
white, we were men, and even the shortest of us was bigger than the brawny but
miniature-sized women we encountered on the path. Some women and children would simply run out
of fear. They would see us coming, and
bolt in the opposite direction, eventually darting off the path into a thicket
of brush to watch us pass by. When I
asked Alberto why they were running, he would tell me they thought the war was
starting again and they were running to hide.
Others, not knowing what to do, played the deference card. Assuming that all white men were high ranking
officials, they would stand to the side and kneel, lowering their heads to the
ground the way a serf would bow to his or her lord.
When we finally arrived at the pump, we were in desperate need of water
and rejuvenation. The ten hours of
non-stop walking had broken most of our bodies, and while our spirits were
still high, we were flagging fast. We
sat down under a tree and all removed our shoes to survey the damage. Dylan had two blisters the size of quarters
on the sides of his toes and Mike had a four-inch long blister on the bottom of
his foot. The others weary travelers
didn’t fare much better and by this point we were all walking in a kind of
blister-inflicted hobble.
We walked over to the pump to fill our water bottles and the 20 women surrounding
the pump stopped what they were doing and looked at us. We were too close for them to run, and they
didn’t want to lose their spot in line, so they just stopped and stared. Did they think we were soldiers pillaging the
landscape, European diplomats from Maputo, or a group of oversized nomadic
albinos? Well, whatever they thought, it
worked to our benefit because we handed them our water bottles and our VIP
status took us to the front of the watering line to get our bottles filled and
let us get on our way.
The last few hours of the first day were tenuous, with us growing
continually dispirited and having to alter our strides to only step on the few
square inches of unblistered skin we had left on our ailing feet. Finally, at around 7 p.m. after 14 hours of
nearly non-stop hiking we walked into a small homestead of mud and stick huts
and were greeted by Alberto’s sister. We
deduced from the map that we had walked about 60 kilometers that day.
Her family’s compound was humble, but not impoverished. There were at least four small huts spread
around a small dirt clearing, and there were two fires raging in front of us
with home-made wooden chairs spaced invitingly around the fires. Alberto’s sister welcomed us all without
speaking, kissing our cheeks and motioning to the chairs circling the
fire. Like most people living this deep
in the bush, neither she nor any of her family members spoke Portuguese and we
were forced to communicate with her through Alberto or a series of crude hand
gestures and butchered local language.
After she greeted us, she scurried back to her fire and sat back down
with the rest of her family, leaving us, the guests, to the fire which had the
nicest chairs around it. I imagined that
in preparation for our arrival she had frantically visited all of the neighbors
to borrow their best chairs. Most
families only have a few good chairs that can be pulled out spur-of-the-moment
to entertain a passing guest.
I also wondered how she got news of our arrival. They have no phone, certainly no email, and
no mailbox. When I asked Alberto this he
said that he ran into his niece at the water pump a few hours back and told her
to run home and start preparing the food and chairs. I felt a tinge of guilt for imposing so
freely. This was not a well-off family
and to provide food for eight hungry men was no drop in the bucket, especially
in a year of drought like this year when so many were already suffering from
hunger. I shored myself by realizing how
bedrock it is in Mozambican culture to receive guests. Whereas in the states it would be considered unthinkable
to show up at a stranger’s house unannounced expecting food and a bed, in
Mozambique the burden of the host is foundational. People will drop what they
are doing, feed and bath you without a second thought.
That evening we were fed steaming plates of xima with chicken stew. I felt even guiltier because chicken is a
very special delicacy for poor families like Alberto’s sister. They might eat chicken or goat only a few
times a year, saving them for holidays and special occasions. Throughout the entire night, as we tended our
wounds and rested around the fire, only the bravest children of the family had
the courage to come explore us, listening to our strange tongue, and probing
our peculiar hair. The rest of the
family stayed safely away, watching us and listening from a distance. Most Mozambican households have multiple
related families living in the same compound and will generally have two fires,
one reserved for the men, the other for the women and children. Tonight was no different and again I felt a
pang of guilt for falling so easily into the gender norms.
The next morning we woke early with the intent of getting on the road
shortly after dawn, but it was a frosty morning and we felt no other compulsion
than to sit around the fire and wait for the sun to pick up its intensity. As we repacked our bags and ate the oranges
we brought we had to turn down our host’s offer to make and serve breakfast to
us. It would have delayed us and depleted more of their precious food stock
that we already felt guilty about raiding.
Thus, around 6 a.m. we got on road and buried our heads into the 40
kilometers or so that we knew we would have to walk to arrive to Dombe that
afternoon.
The second day of walking wasn’t as romantic as the first had been. The blisters that we all had didn’t heal
overnight and, save for an initial burst of energy out the door, we quickly
slowed and took on the hobble that had characterized our previous
afternoon. With our packs on, trudging
through the burnt landscape, day two felt more like a military march than a
vacation. Talking ceased as we focused
on putting one foot in front of the other.
The landscape was not beautiful.
August in Mozambique is the height of the dry season. It hadn’t rained since February and the
moisture in the air had all but vanished.
What was left was a sea of yellow grassland with a few brown trees
spotting the area. In most areas the
dying brown grass had been burnt by farmers and hunters leaving the soil black
with tufts of charred grass and streaks of white ash. What was left was an eerie desolation that
seemed almost apocalyptic.
We thought we would get to Dombe shortly after lunch. This turned out to be misinformation and our
collective morale plummeted. As we were
eating lunch we were told we had a solid three to four hours left and would be
lucky to make it by nightfall. That’s
when things got hairy. Tempers rose, we
broke rank, some fell behind and other pushed ahead in desperation. When we finally arrived at the river that
marked the entrance to Dombe, we were too tired to even celebrate. I arrived first, took my shoes off and washed
my feet in the river as I waited for the others. I don’t know if it was the exhaustion or the contrast
with the burnt landscape, but the river was one of the most beautiful things I
had ever seen. The sun, now a watercolor
of pink and violet, painted the horizon as it dipped into the river
upstream. Set to this backdrop there was
a hub of activity at the river. Canoes
made of hollowed out tree trunks were shuttling men and women across the river
who were anxious to make it home before dark.
One canoes sat on the banks of the river abandoned and half submerged in
the water. The sun reflected off the
water in the boat, giving it a purple hue that not even my camera could
capture.
We were told that this river was particularly infested with crocodiles
and it seemed too wide and deep to wade through anyway, so we approached a
boatman who assured us that all eight of us could fit on his boat for five
meticals per person. Seeing the dilapidated
canoe he was proposing to fit us all in, we laughed. We weren’t about to come this far just to see
our canoe capsize and get eaten by crocodiles.
Therefore, we decided to split up into three groups to make the crossing
in the rickety canoes. When we reached
the other side it finally hit us that we had done it—100 kilometers, two days
and a lot a of blisters—we had walked to Dombe.
I open my eyes and hear the sound of talking on my left. In the blinding night I can just barely make
out the shape of a cluster of five or six women. They are clearly patients, waiting for the
same car that I’m waiting for in order to get to the hospital in Mangunde. They call out, “Teacher,” and my head jerks
up out of my wandering imagination. We
exchange salutations and they ask me if I know anything about a car being sent
from the mission. I called the manager a
few hours earlier in hopes that he would send a car to pick me up at the
intersection and, like he always tells me, he urged me to relax and trust him,
there would be a car…he just didn’t say when.
As the minutes tick by, however, I begin to wonder if this car is,
indeed, coming. I assure the women that
I have spoken to the manager and a car is on its way, but I realize that I am forcing
myself to sound more confident that I really am. This has happened before—once I showed up at
the intersection with a promised ride, waited for three hours and finally
received a phone call telling me the car had problems and wasn’t going to make
it. Better find a place to stay
there. I ended up riding into Muxungue
and staying on the floor in the house of a complete stranger that I had met
that day on the bus. He served my dinner
and breakfast the next morning and I thanked him for his hospitality. As hospitable as he was, I don’t want to have
to do that tonight.
Just when I am considering my emergency plan, however, I hear the
distant roar of a motor and see headlights peak out from around the bend up
ahead. The ladies let out a cheer of
relief, as they don’t want to be stuck out here in the cold with the bandits
and spirits any more than I do, and quickly arrange their things to get a good
seat in the car. When the truck pulls
up, I am immediately given the first seat and the women wait for their names to
be checked off the list to enter the car. What will happen if there is not
enough space for all of them? That is
not an option. This is what happens so
often in Mozambique. You make room,
sacrifice safety, and compromise your comfort because there is simply no other
option. All 12 of us pile into the back
of the truck, stepping on each other’s toes and sitting on laps in order to all
get into the closed back truck. The
engine revs, I closed my eyes again, and before I know it, I am back at
home.
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