Mozambique: not South Africa, thank goodness

Kruger was nice -- I am thankful for my efficient new sleep schedule (going to bed at 9 p.m., waking up at 7) -- but getting up at 5:30 got kind of old. Good thing, then, that we called it quits after four days to venture to Mozambique.

Customs was generally uneventful, besides acquiring a couple of new stamps in my passport -- also, the Mozambican visa has a neat holographic on it, cha-ching. Customs was stressful (when isn't it?) but uneventful.

Due to my extreme lack of pictures and huge chunks of text in my last few entries, I'm going to attempt to make this as illustrated as possible. Attempt, mind you... I will also attempt to capture the essence of Mozambique in this entry. A lofty task, I'm sure, much like Conan taking over the Tonight Show (how did I forget about this? Also, good, because Leno has been a little too safe and predictable in recent years).

Maputo is only about 70 km from the border, and the South African government, in its infinite kindness (read: trade benefits), paid a fair amount of cash to fix up the roads from S.A. to the capital. Mozambican roads are notoriously terrible. Most cars, to avoid the potholes, move to the other side of the road (often the wrong side), so not only do drivers have to watch out for livestock and potholes in the road, they also have to make sure they don't drive into other cars.

We took public transport.

And, since I've almost reached the end of my semester here, I don't think I should mince words. I really don't enjoy Cape Town. I don't think it's aesthetically pleasing, and there are few historical sites. Everyone takes a car, so the streets are largely empty of pedestrians (except for the people who can't afford cars). So if Cape Town is everything I hate in a city, Maputo is everything I enjoy in a city. It's busy, vibrant, and even continues to exist after 6 p.m. on weekdays.


Depending on how you measure developed countries, I think it'd be pretty obvious that venturing from South Africa to Mozambique is a change in lifestyle. Don't drink the water, we were advised. So we bought bottled water. Don't catch malaria, we were advised. So we started taking anti-malarials and covering up with mosquito repellent twice a day, burning mosquito coils and wearing long sleeves whenever possible. Not a second too soon, either: malaria kills more people in Mozambique than HIV/SIDA. And the average life expectancy is 39.

I'm a pretty healthy individual, with no known allergies and, due to my love of (often greasy) food, I'm in slightly-less-than peak physical condition, but I've never really been susceptible to disease hysteria until this trip. A few days after coming into Mozambique, I woke up with a high fever and sore throat. The symptoms of malaria are much like that of flu, with fevers and aches/pains. The sore throat didn't really fit the bill, but I wasn't acting so rationally, so I became convinced I'd acquired malaria. Since I hadn't noticed any mosquito bites, it seemed strange; also, the likelihood of acquiring malaria while a) not every mosquito carries the virus, b) the ones that do only sting you between dusk and dawn, c) the anti-malarials should counter most of the non-resistant strains, and d) the mosquito repellant should repel most mosquitos leaving you bite-less, was quite slim. But I'd still rather not see another mosquito net for awhile.

But back to the city. The first thing I noticed was, true to the travel blogs I'd read before, the streets were paved with trash. I didn't see a public trash can the entire time I was there, and on more than a few occasions, passengers on buses merely tossed their used bottles and wrappers out the window without a second thought. I wondered if anyone ever actually picked up the trash -- I saw a guy sweeping the sidewalk, but he just swept the trash into the street -- but it looks like it just gets pushed around. It's dirty. It's often smelly. But it all combines to create a very pleasant, friendly city. It's even -- dare I say? -- pretty.

Also, we ended up staying with another perfect stranger, courtesy of Hospitality Club (which, as far as I can tell, is identical to Couch Surfers in everything but name), who also turned out not to be a serial killer. Phew. That's two in a row, so I guess it's been a lucky streak. Jose volunteers for an organization that helps blind kids. I'll admit, I didn't talk to him alot, admittedly because his English was a little difficult to understand. After awhile I learned that "he was laze" meant "he was lazy" and that the "frys" was the freezer, and "hypo" was not a prefix for "-glycemia" but rather the large mammal that lives in lakes and roams the earth at night. He lived on the outskirts of town, a good hour and a half (by chapa) to the city center. His house -- a modest one bedroom-one bathroom affair -- was nonetheless pretty nice.

The one downside? He seemed to have a pretty traditional view of women: he asked if I'd be okay walking around the city since "women are less resistant than men." I'd been struggling with my duffel bag earlier because a) I packed way too much stuff, again, and b) Mozambique is covered in sand -- not just regular sand, but super soft sand. The kind of sand you sink into while walking. So the heavy duffel bag + hard walking scenario = me working up a sweat and panting (read: sweating profusely, gasping for breath). And trying to keep up with Jose, who seemed to subscribe to the time-is-money philosophy and thus walked fast, not to mention the fact that he had longer legs than me... it was an ordeal. He offered to carry my bag a few times -- at first, I handed it over, relieved, but then I decided I needed to carry it, for womankind. Somehow, it seemed futile to try to point out to him that not all women are weaklings, that I'm not a fit specimen to measure women by since I'm completely out of shape and muscle mass, and there are plenty of women athletes who could outrun him. So instead I tried my best to shoulder my bag and keep up. It was a heavy burden. And I still couldn't keep up.



Sexism aside, the one true aspect of cultural immersion came in the form of the chapas (see above), the public buses. I think "bus" is a very generous term here. They're vans with four rows of seats, and are in various states of disrepair. As the guidebook puts it, the owners of the chapas are out to make a profit, and if this includes putting in a few more people for the sake of capacity, they'll do it. My favorite games to play in the chapa included Not Getting Squished, Ignoring B.O. and Counting How Many People Fit Into a Chapa. The personal record was 23 people squeezed into a four-row van (hint: each row should fit maybe four skinny people). The plusses? Each ride cost 5 medicais (before they switched their currency to the new medicais in 2006, the equivalent of 5,000 medicais... but they decided all those zeroes were annoying).

The cons? Ohhhh so many. The drivers, as the guidebook suggests, are prone to taking dangerous shortcuts for the sake of getting to their destination more quickly, with little regard for the personal safety of the passengers. Let me just say, Maputo is not a city for the faint of heart, with regard to driving. Translation: scariest driving destination ever. I was certain (once again) that I was going to be killed while on a chapa my final evening in Maputo. Moreover, it's uncomfortable, and if you sit on the folding seats, be prepared to jump out at every stop to let out passengers. Jose had mentioned that the chapas get kind of frustrating when you actually have to take them. Oh, I believe it. I sort of like order in my life, which is why I much prefer subway systems or trains, things with a schedule. The chapas were constantly crowded.

On the issue of Portuguese, neither me nor Nick knew any. Our initial plan -- to speak both French and Spanish at the same time, because Portuguese probably is a mixture between the two -- didn't work out so well, because Portuguese and Spanish are apparently pretty similar. So that worked. I just stuck to "quanto?" (how much?). And asking the lady on the bus what vegetable she was eating in Portu-French: "Le... nom de legume?" I sputtered. She looked at me, smiled, and said "un amaniola" (cassava).

Speaking of which, the people in Mozambique I saw were nice. Yes, we were the only white people for miles -- much like in South Africa -- yet the environment is so different. Jose's neighborhood was devoid of white people, so we got plenty of stares in the street. People even asked him (joking, I think) where he was taking us. Kids, I think as part of a dare, would run up and touch us (to see if we were real?), or cross our paths and run off to the safety of their groups. There was some laughing, some pointing, but it felt more out of curiosity than out of spite or malice. There was a LOT of staring, though. People would literally stop what they were doing and watch us walk by, though as we got into the city, this decreased.

And about safety, I guess the logic holds: you can get mugged even the safest city; by the same token, in a dangerous city, you could escape unscathed. One lady at a travel agency on campus warned against going to Mozambique because it was dangerous, but South Africa's incredibly dangerous. Except for at Inhambane, a small town, I never felt like I was putting myself in danger. That could have been because we were traveling with a local, but it was also because there aren't a lot of the residual affects as a result of Apartheid and racial disparity.

For one thing, there aren't that many white people (the Portuguese were driven out several years back). For another thing, although Mozambique is definitely a poor country, I saw so many Mercedes and BMWs while there -- conspicuous consumption, indeed. In some neighborhoods, the houses are enormous. And the Polana Shopping Center, with its designer stores (Lacoste, Louis Vuitton, etc.) and impeccably-dressed salespersons, felt like a slice of New York City.

And the city is just so interesting: there are bullet holes in buildings and trees from the civil war that ended in the 1990s, the architecture is a mix of boring Marxist-style high-rises and Mediterranean styles. There's peeling paint, a general artistic shabby feel to the city, and just... a history. The streets are named after famous communist leaders and visionaries. Avs. Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx, Mao Tse Tung... a far cry from "Blue Lake," the cutesy, nature-inspired street name upon which I lived for the first 17 years of my life.

With Jose, we visited the busiest market I've ever been to. I have never seen so many people in my life. We were the only white people in the crowd of thousands. It was so busy and I thought I might get lost, as the sun was setting and visibility was somewhat lessened. But finally, after four months, I think I could finally say I've seen the real Africa.

If there's one "stereotypically African" city to see, make it Maputo. Armed guards stand in front of government buildings (for the record, you're forbidden to take pictures of the buildings, unless you love spending time in jail or with the authorities), vendors sell their wares on the streets, Mercedes zoom by, you can venture through the black market and check out the traditional medicines and enjoy some seafood. All in a day's work.

During our four days in Maputo we saw the museum of natural history, housed in an old mosque, and geological museum, in the old synagogue (hello, religion), but the Museu de Revolucao was unfortunately closed.

Still, Mozambique is pricey. A meal in Stellenbosch, for two, might run $7-8. In Maputo, however, it was difficult to order for two and pay less than $15. So though R1 = ~3,000 MT (or 3 new Meticais), dinner prices are quite lofty. Still, I haggled with a street vendor for a purse and ended up paying maybe $4 for it, so I suppose not all the prices were terrible.

The Portuguese-speaking Mozambicans seem to have rather close ties with the Brazilians rather than the Portuguese, as the Brazilian soap operas are popular. Jose said the Brazilians' dialect of Portuguese is also much more poetic than the Mozambicans', and the guidebook claims the Mozambicans boast a more "sing-songy" Portuguese dialect. However, reading the usual phrases didn't prepare me for a bakery visit when, armed with the equivalent of 50 cents, I set out to buy two small loaves of sweet bread and a couple chocolate thingies.

"Dos paos dorce?"

The guy nodded and put them in a bag.

"Um... and... dos... these?" I pointed to the chocolate pastries.

He shook his head and mumbled something.

"...Dos?" He mumbled something again. It sounded like "vinte." I asked, "quanto?" a few times, then laid my money out on the counter. The bread (pao) was 6 meticais, and after laying out the 15 meticais I had, he shook his head and handed 9 back to me. It was a confusing exchange. The bread was delicious, though. They have a lot of bakeries in Maputo that make sweet bread. Sweet bread is my new favorite thing (step aside, Oprah!). It smells wonderful, is nice and soft... hm. (Weird. I felt like I was describing myself for a second...)

Oddly enough, since I've never taken Spanish or Portuguese or Italian, or any language that could have remotely helped me get along in Mozambique, I found an odd sort of confidence in speaking to people. Nick favors the pointing method which, like it sounds, involves basically pointing at the desired foodstuff and holding up x fingers for the quantity. Once I realized "dos" was pronounced "dohsh," not like Spanish, it was kind of interesting. Still, my comprehension skills were awful. Saying French is a little too different from Portuguese is kind of a cop-out, too. I need to take a language class next semester.