A Highly Anticipated Visit to Mozambique!

I have a Where’s Waldo calendar here in my room which I absolutely love.  If I’m ever bored or anxious I can peel it off the wall, and while I’ve already found Waldo in all 13 scenes, I can look for the elusive Odlaw, his black and yellow foil, Wanda, his weekend hook-up, Wizard Whitebeard, or the most challenging of all, his long-tailed dog, Woof.  On my calendar right below the red and white sea of Waldo look-alikes in July there’s been an event etched into the date July 25th that I’ve been anticipating for over a year—it reads, “July 25^th, parents arrive.” 

I don’t know exactly when this happened, but sometime between high school and Peace Corps, visits from your parent became cool again.  I would’ve been horrified if my parents showed up to visit me on a school field trip in high school, but here in the Peace Corps, a visit from your parents is about as bad-ass as it gets, and trumps all other social gatherings.  It’s widely accepted that volunteers miss their parents here in Africa, and, maybe more importantly, that parents will pay for you and your friends to do cool shit that you wouldn’t have been able to do on your meager volunteer living allowance.  People will take advantage of their parents visiting to go on private game drives, rent beach cottages, fly to South Africa and drive around in chic rental cars instead of braving the horrific public transportation situation here in Moz.

When July 25^th finally came around I was excited for the first leg of our journey to begin.  First my parents flew directly into Vilanculos, or Vil, a small beach town a few hours away from my site.  Hannah had been with me at my site and we hitch-hiked down to Vil together to meet them.  On our way down Hannah and I took the open-back chapa out of the mission to Muxungue, the first town on the way down to Vil.  There we tried to flag down a car headed to Vil.  After a while we got what we thought was a decent ride for our standards—a big open back truck transporting sacs of corn.  We hopped into the back and sat on the corn.  There was plenty of space for our legs to stretch out across the sacs and the few goats that were loaded in the back with us were relatively calm and didn’t smell too bad.  It was blisteringly hot with the sun cooking us along with the corn in the back of the truck, but with a capulana wrapped around our heads and some sunscreen to protect us from the sun’s rays, it was all-in-all not too bad of a ride.

 About an hour into the ride something peculiar happened—a private black SUV passed us and immediately slowed down in front of our truck.  The driver, a middle-aged black man appeared to be signaling for our truck to pull over.   I joked to Hannah that he was probably coming back to offer us a ride in his car.  We both laughed because that never happens; it’s commonly known among Moz15 that with our two accidents and constant road frustrations, Hannah and I have the worst hitch-hiking luck in our group, and there was probably a better chance that this man was coming to rob us than offer us a free ride.  Miraculously, though, the man got out of his car and started talking to us in his heavily-accented English.  He said, “You look like you are suffering!  Why don’t you come into my car and have some water and enjoy the air conditioning?  Are you also going to Vilanculos?”  We looked at him, baffled.  Is this really happening?  To us?  It seemed too good to be true.  One thing that happens in Mozambique is that everything is so fucked and so many people try to take advantage of you on a daily basis that even when someone does something nice for you, you are automatically suspicious of their intentions.   

I said, “How much?” thinking that maybe he saw white people and was going to offer us a ridiculous rate to drive us all the way into Vilanculos, but he waved me off with a flick of his wrist and said, “Please, get in.”  Well, we couldn’t argue with that, and, as nice as our corn sac seats had been, we were ready to get out of the sun. What he did next is something that I’ve never seen someone do while offering a ride, he proceeded to pay the driver of the corn truck for the entire distance that we had come until that point, and did so with a smile.  When we got into the car, we realized where all of this generosity was coming from—this man loved America.

He immediately turned around with an excited smile and asked where we were from.  When we said, “United States of America” his face lit up like a light bulb as he said, “I thought so!” and began reeling off all the cities and celebrities that he’d heard of from America and how much he wanted to visit all of them.  At one point he even said excitedly, “I weesh dat my gret gret grendfada was brought to America as a slave so dat I could be born as an American.”  That was kind of awkward, but we shrugged, “Yeah, us too!”  Another question he asked was whether we were friends with some of his favorite musicians and celebrities like 50 Cent, Jean Claude Van Damn, and Lil Wayne, who all live in America.  This isn’t a question I balk at anymore because I get it almost every day, but what made it especially cute was that he followed it up by saying, “Dese people must be so beezy becose I keep sending this facebook messages and emails to dem and dey never respond.  Why is dat, Mr. Ian.”  “I know, man, they don’t reply to me either.”  Before arriving in Vil, he stopped to buy us each bottles of water and packets of cookies and then dropped us off at the beach villa at which we were to meet my parents that afternoon.

Vilanculos was beautiful.  When we arrived my parents were already there at the beach villa.  Seeing their faces against the back drop of Mozambique, the two distant sides of my life coming together into one picture, was surreal. The veranda of the bamboo villa looked out onto the azure waters of the Indian Ocean and was shaded my coconut trees.  We spent the entire first day of their visit relaxing on the beach and walking around the town.  For lunch on day two we walked to a restaurant and they tried traditional a traditional Mozambican dish, matapa with prawns over xima.  More than the beautiful beach and the fresh seafood I think the most interesting thing for my parents during those first days in Vil was simply walking through the town and market and interacting with the local people – seeing women carrying vegetables and water on their heads and babies on their backs; men hawking sunglasses and sandals at the crowded market; the smell of fresh bread and salted dry fish wafting through the streets.  I realized that I had become desensitized to all of these novelties in my time here in Moz, but being there with my parents, I was able to experience the awe all over again with them.

On our third day in Vil we decided to take a snorkeling cruise to the nearby Macarangue Island.  We boarded a small sailboat, or dhow, in the morning with our local crew and headed out into the turquoise waves. The chef boiled water for tea on board and we were served a small breakfast in route to the island.  On the island we got our snorkeling gear and swam around the colorful reefs that skirted the edges of the island.  While I choked on salt water more times than I can remember, the reefs were beautiful and the brightly colored tropical fish that inhabited them dazzled us as they reflected off the sun.

After Vil, we hired a car and drove the four hours inland to my site, Mangunde.  Despite not having beaches or wildlife to stun us, this is the part of the trip that I was most excited and nervous about.  I wanted my family to meet my friends, colleagues and students and see the place that had filled me with so many experiences over the course of the past year and a half.   The trip to Mangunde turned out to be an overwhelming success.  On the first afternoon, I planned to have a party with a few colleagues and many of my most active students outside the mission at the rural house of my counter-part and friend, Alberto.  We all walked to Alberto’s house together that afternoon and my English students all hankered to get a chance to talk to my parents and use what broken English I had taught them to communicate.  When we arrived to the house my students surprised me by performing a few songs and a short theater skit they had prepared in English for the occasion.  Put on the spot, the four of us, mom, dad, Hannah and I, decided to also present a song that we had prepared in the car on the way in – “In the Jungle.”  It was a hit. 

Afterwards we ate rice with a goat that we killed for the occasion and danced around the fire until nighttime.  Seeing the reality of life and the pure poverty out in a rural homestead like Alberto’s was most assuredly eye-opening for my parents and to meet the students that I have worked so closely with over the past year and a half was definitely the highlight of my parents’ trip to Mozambique.

On our last day in Mangunde, I had class and was able to bring my parents into my English class for an interview with my students.  They had to learn how to speak slowly and choose their words wisely for any of my students to pick up anything and also got a taste for what the classrooms and general school system here in Mozambique is like.  In the evening we cooked another traditional Mozambican dish, couve, and my parents had to learn how to prepare it in the typical Mozambican way – my mom chopped the leafy greens into small slices and my dad cracked and grated the coconut to make the coconut milk.  I have to say that it was delicious – they did a great job for their first Mozambique meal.

After my site we drove up to Beira, the second largest city in Mozambique, and flew out to Johannesburg the next morning.  There the four of us met up with Hannah’s mom, who was just beginning her visit.  We drove to Kruger National Park together, about four hours outside of Johannesburg and found our lodge, a beautiful two story African-style house with a upstairs porch and pool overlooking the reserve.  It was idyllic and a perfect setting for the last leg of our adventure. 

We did an evening game drive on our first day, a full-day game drive on our second day (my birthday) and relaxed at the lodge on our third day.  Everything about it was glorious.  We saw every animal you could imagine (except the elusive leopard) and took it all in.  On our full day game drive we spotted dozens of giraffes, elephants, impala, nyala, kudu, rhinoceroses, hyenas, warthogs, and even saw about ten lions.  In one instance we were driving slowly past a site where we had been told a giraffe carcass was being fed on by a couple of young lions.  We went there and saw that the hyenas had already taken hold of the kill and the lions had fled just minutes earlier.  Fortunately for us, however, as we were driving away we spotted two lions trotted lazily in the grass off to the side of the road.  As we got closer we saw that they also approached us.  They seemed to not even notice us.  The two lions crossed the road in front of us and proceeded to walk along the road, only a few yards in front of us for five to ten minutes.  It was amazing to be so close to such a powerful and fabled creature and an untamed lion.  I felt that at any time it could decide to jump up into the car and tear us all to shreds.  Luckily for us, though, it didn’t and eventually wandered back into the bush. 

After our incredible wildlife experience it was time for me to say goodbye to my family.  I had been anticipating their visit for months and now it had already come to a close.  They dropped me off at the bus stop where I would catch a bus back to Maputo and another one up to my site and they continued on to Johannesburg where they would catch their flight later that evening.

All in all, it was a wonderful trip.  Yes, I did some cool shit that I wouldn’t have been able to do on my poor volunteer stipend, but more than that I got the chance to show the people I love the things that I’ve been passionate about for the last year and a half.  One of the difficulties of the Peace Corps experience I’ve heard is that you become deeply engrossed in your experience during your two years of service, and then you get back to the States and it seems that few people care or understand what you have been through.  I feel that now, having shared this experience with my family, that I’ve at least taken steps towards letting others understand the challenges we face here in Mozambique every day. 

One of the things that the Peace Corps teaches you in training is that there are three goals every PCV should strive to achieve in his or her Peace Corps service.  One is to promote the development of skills and resources in your country of service; another is to promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of other countries; and the third is to promote a better understanding of other countries and cultures on the part of other Americans.  If nothing else, I know that bringing my family here to Mozambique fulfilled my third goal as a volunteer—my family left here after only 12 days, but with an understanding of who Mozambicans are and what kind of conditions they deal with on a daily basis.  Mozambique is no longer just a shape on a map or a photo on facebook for my parents and I; it has a personality.  It is a live film in their minds and an on-going relationship in their hearts.  In my opinion, this is as valuable as any work we can do as PCVs.