tgtravels

This is a blog about my travels. My "regular" life is much too boring to bother blogging about.

Monday, June 30, 2008

Nampula

Not for the first time, the chapa I was riding on broke down (random factoid: standard minibuses in Nampula province are called tanzanianos, because they were bought from Tanzania). Usually, the driver or conductor gets out and toils under the hood or under the car for a while and fixes the problem within 5 or 10 minutes. On my way to Cuamba, of course, the bus broke beyond immediate repair and I had to take a truck. But instances like that are rare, Mozambicans are skilled and resourceful mechanics. So when I heard a thud and a pop perhaps 20 minutes out of Ilha, I wasn't overly concerned. I started getting worried 20 minutes later when the driver took out his cell phone and called someone... ten minutes later, a guy showed in a truck with a bunch of ropes, and towed the tanzaniano to the nearest village, to a garage.

The problem was with a giant spring. Don't ask me where the spring came from, I know absolutely nothing about cars. It was a really big spring, however. So this is what ended up happening: the biggest men in the area had to hold down the spring while a smaller dude wrapped twine around it or something like that. And by biggest guys in the area, I mean me. The thing was really difficult to hold down, it took like 15 of us to do it. We had to hold it there for half an hour while the smaller mechanic did whatever he was doing with it. I asked someone what exactly was happening but my Portuguese vocabulary doesn't extend to automotive/mechanic words. Eventually, the problem was fixed to the mechanic's satisfaction and the spring was re-fitted. And then we drove off.

I will now add "Mozambican garagehand" next to "Mozambican firefighter" on my CV.

Sunday, June 29, 2008

Ilha de Moçambique

I wasn't planning to write this today. Tomorrow I'll be stuck in Nampula, a rather boring city, and was planning on doing all my internet business there. All I wanted to do today was make some phone calls. I reached my Dad OK (he's in Greece now) but calling Canada has once again proven difficult. I'm not sure one can actually dial North America from Mozambique. My phone call came to 117 meticais, but I only had a 200 meticais note. Of course, the attendant here doesn't have change (standard for Mozambique). Instead, he's letting me use the internet to make up the difference. Alright then!

I like trains. I like riding them, I like looking out of their windows, I like hearing trains whistles. So naturally, I jumped at the chance to take Mozambique's last remaining regularly scheduled passenger train, from Cuamba to Nampula. It was supposed to leave at 5 AM. I arrived at 4:30. There are no lights in Cuamba at 4:30 AM, not even at the train station. I couldn't see where I was going, and I ran into a barbed wire fence at the station. I probably have tetanus now. Hundreds of Mozambicans were sleeping on the platform, covered in blankets, tarps, anything to keep warm. The train didn't pull up until 6:30. I figured we'd leave at 8 or so, but at 7:30 it disappeared. Soon, a handwritten note appeared on a chalkboard saying that the train was expected at noon. I puttered around for half an hour trying to decide what to do; ultimately, I resolved to trudge back to my hotel and ask the lady there if I could sleep for a few more hours, as check out time wasn't until 11:00. Just as I began to leave the train station, there was a commotion behind me: now, the train was leaving at 10:00. Thank goodness I saw that, or else I would have been stuck in Cuamba.

The train was pretty much like taking a chapa, but slower and less cramped. There was only one other woman in my compartment, so I could sprawl out. We spoke a little, but mostly she just sang to herself. She also bought a whole bunch of vegetables as the train passed through various villages; by the end, she had great bundles of onions, carrots, and cassava. One guy was selling chickens. Someone three compartments over from me bought two of them, I could heard them flapping and squawking around. I wished I was in that compartment; I love seeing chickens on public transport. The people selling all this stuff basically attacked the train as it stopped in their village. Their life basically revolves around that thing. They make their money selling produce to passengers. Little kids run down to the tracks to watch it pass, and sing songs. It was not uncommon to pass a village and see 150 or 200 vendors converge on the train, and another 700 or 800 people watching it pass. I am extremely happy that my life doesn't revolve around a passing train.

After a brief stay in Nampula at a hotel that reminded me of every small hotel in Thessaloniki, I moved on to Ilha yesterday. Ilha is pretty much amazing. It is an island 3.5 km off the mainland, in the Indian Ocean. It was the capital of Portuguese East Africa for 350+ years. There is more colonial architecture here than in the rest of Mozambique combined, Maputo included. The top half of the island is basically a ghost town, full of crumbling old buildings that nobody lives in anymore. The bottom half is a densely populated Makua fishing village with reed and bamboo shacks. It makes for a really interesting contrast. Pretty much everyone who comes here loves it. I met a Polish guy today who has traveled in Africa for 6 months, and he claims that Ilha is his favourite place in southern Africa. I can definitely see that.

Here's the problem with this place: the children here are extraordinarily poorly behaved. By children, I mean everyone under the age of 20, basically. The older people here are lovely. They smile and say good morning to you, but leave you alone. They're used to seeing a trickle of white people so I'm not a curiosity to them. In contrast, the kids are just vile. It's worse then just asking for money. That I can deal with. They harass you until you want to punch them in the face. Worse still, they know that they are being obnoxious, and continue being obnoxious because they know it's making you upset. For example: there are all sorts of people around town trying to sell you old coins which have been found on the beach. The oldest coin I've seen is an old Arabian slave trading coin, from the 1500s. I had a kid, about 14 or 15 years old, follow me around town trying to sell me bullshit hoax coins. For example, he showed me a coin and said it was a Portuguese imperial coin from the 1800s. I could plainly see that it wasn't; it was a 20 escudo coin from 1986. When I shook my head no, he laughed and ran away. 15 minutes later he was back. Now he wanted to sell me 5 euro cents. Again he told me it was an old imperial coin. Again he laughed and ran away, as I told him to fuck off and not to speak to me. Finally, he tried selling me a Mozambican 50 centavos coin, which is currently legal tender. He couldn't even finish his sales pitch because he was too busy laughing. I have about a million stories like this. Here is another one. I was walking back to my hotel from a restaurant yesterday, and kids were following me home. At first, I didn't know it was kids. All I heard were footsteps behind me. I kept turning around to see if someone was following me. Ilha gets really dark at night, there are barely any electric lights here, so I couldn't see anything. I kept hearing people behind me and I kept turning around to see who it was. I thought someone was going to jump me. I guess I was growing visibly agitated, because then I heard giggling. It was a group of 3 teenagers, and they thought it was funny to follow me and freak me out. They emerged from their hiding places them began running around me. Some asked for money. The youngest kid, probably about 9, actually reached into my pocket. I wanted to dropkick him. Eventually, after 5 minutes of this nonsense, they were admonished by a passerby and finally stopped. I've had rocks thrown at me innumerable times. Kids run up to me and yell things at me in Makua. I've considered the possibility that this is just how kids on Ilha ammuse themselves, because there really isn't too much for them to do. But no, I've decided that they are little twerps who know they are being obnoxious, and revel in that.

This is how my entire stay has been. I have been unable to relax because of the packs of idiotic kids who think it's funny to annoy the foreigners. My extreme dislike for children is pretty legendary, so you can imagine how agitated I am right about now. I trudge around, devising new and gruesome methods of torture, in case I should be so lucky as to find myself in a secluded area with one of the little bastards. I want to drown them in the Indian Ocean. I envisioned staying here more than just two nights, but now I can't wait to leave.

I basically only have a week left on this trip. I have a forced one stay stopover in Nampula as making it north from here is very difficult. Then I'll spend three nights somewhere (to be decided in Nampula) before spending three nights in Pemba lying on the beach. From Pemba I fly back to Maputo on the 7th. The last two days in Maputo will be spent tying up loose ends, buying music and generally preparing for my flight back on the 9th. It's begun to dawn on me that I'll be back in Canada soon, and I've begun to think a lot about Greece.

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Cuamba, Mozambique

So I made it across the lake safely. Frankly, I don't know what the fuss was about. Some people I spoke to in Malawi make the Ilala sound like an unsanitary death trap. I guess it was kind of on the dirty side - I woke up in the middle of the night face-to-face with a rat, and there were plenty of cockroaches and ants about - but it was as sturdy as you'd like, there was no chance of it sinking. People who think the Ilala is dangerous should go ride ferries in Nicaragua. Instead, my two biggest issues were as follows: first, I was riding on the top deck, which got extremely cold and windy at night, and I have neither a tent or a sleeping bag; second, I assumed that the ferry would accept Mozambican currency since it called at three Mozambican ports. It didn't; only Malawian kwachas were accepted. So I couldn't buy any food or water while I was on board.

The first problem was weathered pretty successfully. I wore two sweaters over two t-shirts, my one pair of pants over a pair of shorts, and then 3 pairs of socks. I wrapped a towel around my head it warm. I slept on a bench. The cold kept waking me up at night, but I probably got in about three or four hours of sleep. Probably three. I slept on a bench. Perhapa I could be a hobo after all. The money problem was a bigger issue, since the ferry was dreadfully late. We arrived at Likoma Island two hours late; we left Likoma seven hours behind schedule. It took an unbelievably long time to unload everything. There was no jetty on Likoma - or indeed at any other port of call - so the ferry anchored about 100 metres off shore, and then everything had to loaded into small motorboats to be taken to shore. By the time we got to my stop, Metangula, we were ten hours late and it was 10 PM. I hadn't eaten since 1 PM the day before. I was STARVING and also quite thirsty, as my water had run out probably seven hours previous. I jostled with random Mozambicans to get on the first motorboat to shore - all I could think about was sleep (I figured nothing would be open and I'd have to eat in the morning, which was right). The boat dropped us off about 10 metres from shore in knee deep water. I had to jump into the lake while Mozambicans climbed over me to get on.

I found a small hotel by about 10:30. I was pretty sure the woman who ran it quoted me a price of 1,250 meticais. This seemed like a ridiculous price for this particular hotel, but I figured it was just the foreigner's tax and I didn't really say anything. Turns out that she had actually said 250 meticais, and I had misunderstood. In Niassa province, the way they say two (dois) is almost identical to how they say twelve (doze). I thought she had said "twelve hundred", but she was actually saying "two hundred". Even though I was delirious with hunger and thirst and fatigue, this was a ridiculous error on my part, because the only language where people say things like "twelve hundred" or "fifty nine hundred" is in English. I gave the woman 1,250. This is how I figured out my mistake.

I was about the go to sleep when there was knock on the door. It was the woman who had sold me the room. She wanted to know if I wanted a girl to sleep with me tonight. I was a little taken aback - I've never heard of women playing the pimp role in Mozambique, it's always men - and for a second I thought that maybe I was staying in a brothel. I told her no, thank you, I just wanted to sleep because I was waking up early to go to Lichinga. She looked confused. Then I asked her where the bathroom was. She smiled, then led me towards an outhouse a little ways to the right. She then asked me if I wanted to have sex with her in the bathroom. I was still really confused, and I wasn't sure what to do, so I again declined, and said that I'd rather sleep. Thanks for asking though.

I lay awake for a while thinking about this bizarre incident, and I pieced together what happened. She had asked me for 250 meticais ($10). I had given her 1,250 meticais ($50). She assumed that I had given her the extra money because I wanted to have sex with her. In the morning, I told her in my best Portuguese that there had been a misunderstanding and that I thought the room was 1,250 meticais, so therefore I needed 1000 meticais in change. She pretended like she didn't know what I was talking about, and she tried to tell me that the room costed 1,040 meticais. Things got pretty heated. Eventually, I made my point forecefully enough that she gave me my 1000 meticais back.

And that is the story of how I inadvertantly paid a Mozambican woman to have sex with me.

By 10:00 AM that day I ended up in Lichinga. There is nothing to do in Lichinga, and I seriously contemplated pushing on to Cuamba, but I thought I needed a day to eat (I still hadn't eaten - I ate at about noon for the first time in 46 hours) and rehydrate and rest. Also, crucially, there was a LAM (Mozambique's biggest airline) office in Lichinga, and I needed to buy a ticket for a flight back south to Maputo in advance for my flight back to Canada. So I stayed in Lichinga for a night. As it turns out the LAM office was closed because it was Mozambican independence day! Happy 33rd birthday Mozambique! I really should have known better - there is a street named 25 de Junho in every single Mozambican city. There wasn't really a parade in Lichinga, the town is too sleepy for that. Once in a while, a war veteran would amble by, drunk, singing revolutionary songs. Instead I watched the big celebrations in Maputo on TV. I could write an entire post on how amazing and hilarious it was, but I have more interesting things to talk about.

My trip from Lichinga to Cuamba was the best yet. It started on a chapa. This was the most beat up chapa I've been in so far - the door didn't close and every window was cracked - and, sure enough, about two hours into the trip, it bottomed out on a shitty dirty road and broke down. The driver got out and toiled underneath. He emerged with a bunch of parts and beat at them with a hammer for a while. That didn't seem to do the trick, so he flagged down a passing car, jumped in, and made off for the nearest town. Us passengers had to wait until another vehicle passed, or until the chapa was fixed.

Another chapa passed first, and maybe 5 or 6 passengers squeezed into that one. About an hour later, this is after two hours of waiting, a two-ton truck with a flat bed stopped, and we all piled in. The driver was driving this thing at about 120 km per hour on a dirt road, it was positively harrowing. I was sitting at the front of the box on a big sack of grain, and I thought I was going to go hurtling off the side. I held on for dear life; the conductor (rather, the guy who collected fares) thought that was funny. After a while I kind of got used to it, and decided to stand up and enjoy the landscape. It was amazing. At first I was looking behind me, and I could see the entire Lichinga Plateau (one of the only mountainous areas in Mozambique) recede behind me. Simply breathtaking. I would not sit down for the rest of the trip - for the next seven hours I was standing, looking mostly in front of me, enjoying the feeling of the wind battering my face.

The conductor eventually decided that I was a lunatic and, therefore, worth his affections. A bunch of other people on the minibus also took a liking to me. At a town called Mandimba, the conductor went off and bought a bottle of gin. He opened it and insisted that I had some. I took a big swig. It tasted like rubbing alcohol. I passed it around. This pattern would continue every time we stopped at a market, which was pretty often: the conductor would get out, buy more gin, insist that I took the first gulp, then passed it around. There were probably 11 or 12 bottles of gin; by the end, it was only me, the conductor and two other dudes drinking the gin. Things became more crazy the more we drank. Eventually, I stopped holding on the rail at all and just stood straight up in the box, leaning on the cage. What a dumb thing to do - we were going at brakeneck speeds on a shitty dirt road, and the driver was piloting the truck erratically because he had drank gin as well (not the first and definitely not the last drunk driver I've had here - it's very common). At one point we almost nailed a buy on a bike. It was the biker's fault, he had suddenly emerged from the bushes and pedaled in front of the truck. We missed him by half an inch at the most. The driver stopped and had to be physically restrained from going after the biker. He wanted to beat him down. We kept going. The road went from being packed down dirt to loose dirt and we went fish-tailing all over the road. Cars passed in the other direction, kicking up dust and making us incredibly filthy. I was very, very tipsy - I can still feel the gin now. We probably ran over two or three chickens. At one point, a man disembarked and tried to pay with a torn 50 meticais note. The problem was that the tear was through the serial number, so the note was invalid. The conductor refused to accept it and appropriated a bit of the guy's grain. We continued down the road. Kids covered in dust on the side of the road thought it was hilarious that a white guy was in the truck (definitely not the way tourists get around up here... not that there are tourists here in the first place) and called to me. I waved back. The conductor kept getting more gin - thank goodness I had eaten some bread and oranges along the way or else I surely would have vomited. Still more gin. Eventually, finally, mericfully, we reached Cuamba. The conductor and another dude wanted to go drinking with me in the city. I was sober enough to realize that this was the worst idea in the world (I am leaving here tomorrow on a 5 AM train to Nampula), so I sneaked off while they were unloading grain from the truck. And here I am now.

Northern Mozambique is definitely to my liking so far.

Monday, June 23, 2008

Nkhata Bay

I never should have left Kande, I really enjoyed it there. The beach was beautiful, and the people I met were lovely. Tiffany left yesterday as well, but I had also made the acquaintance of three Swiss people with whom I would watch soccer at the local watering hole. They were a riot. One of them, Till, would swear at the television in Swiss German when something happened that he didn't like. They were amazed that I knew more about European soccer than they did, something they conceded after I won 1500 kwachas from each of them after Russia beat the Netherlands two days ago. They gave me the money in the form of vodka shots. I had also come to like the locals. The bartender at the local watering hole, John, was an especially wonderful type. I learned more about Malawi from him than I did from pretty much everyone else I've met here combined.

Furthermore, I was pretty sure that I wouldn't enjoy Nkhata Bay. I inevitably had to pass through here, since the ferry that will take me back to Mozambique leaves from here at 8:00 PM tonight. But I could easily have spent a fourth night in Kande and taken a bus here in the morning. I would have had hours to spare before the ferry left. But I came a day earlier anyway. And lo and behold, I haven't enjoyed the experience. Nkhata Bay is the most touristed place in Malawi. I'm not particularly sure why: it's a small port town, albeit a rather picturesque port town surrounded by hills, but there is no beach here and not particularly much to do. It has built its appeal as a hedonistic backpackers retreat. Hordes of travelers come here to get wasted in their hostel bars, lie around in hammocks all day, then get wasted again at night. As I've gone over already, this isn't really what I'm looking to do this trip. To be fair, I liked the hostel a lot. They offered a range of cultural activities, such as Tonga lessons, and helped guests get involved in community projects. But most guests there are there to drink, smoke weed (a.k.a. Malawi Gold, a.k.a. Malawi Wowie), and consume other miscellaneous drugs.

As you might imagine, there is an army of townspeople trying to sell art, random trinkets and psychotropic drugs to tourists. Locals do not talk to you unless they are trying to sell you something. Often, their sales pitch is rather aggressive. If you say you have no money, they ask if you can trade something; one guy asked to go through my bag to find something worth a trade, and began to reach for it, which did not sit well with me. One guy uttered a quasi-threat towards me when I refused to sell him my shorts (a guy in Kande wanted my shorts too... they really aren't that nice!). The guy was messed up on something much worse than Malawi Wowie. He later heard me tell someone else where I was staying, and he promised to pay me a visit while I was sleeping. Laughable, since the hostel is patrolled by at least five security guards, and a troupe of ornery dogs. Point is, I felt uncomfortable pretty much the whole time I was here. A disappointing end to my time in Malawi, which has on the whole been rather pleasant.

I feel bad about passing through Malawi so quickly, especially because I'll probably never return, but my priority on this trip is Mozambique. Malawi is a very nice country with very friendly people. It is a dreadfully poor country: most of the population here lives on less than $1 per day, unemployment/underemployment is unimaginably high and the country isn't particularly fertile, is overpopulated and seemingly always on the precipice of a famine or food crisis. High world prices for fuel and food are currently exacerbating these problems. What is
most troubling though, is that Malawians seem to be extremely pessimistic about the future. Nobody thinks things will get better, and many people think it will get much, much worse. This is in stark contrast to Mozambique, where people are extremely optimistic about the future.

I'm also alarmed at how tourism has developed in Malawi. Most of the industry is controlled by foreigners, mostly Brits, which is probably inevitable because establishing a scuba shop or a hotel is extremely expensive and 99.9999% of Malawians simply don't have the money to start a venture like that. But I question how much of the profits are reinvested in Malawi - I've heard from more than one Malawian, including an alarming number of the villagers in Kande, that most foreigners involved in tourism invest their money elsewhere. Most galling to me are the employment practices at some hostels. Often, foreigners will be employed as managers, bartenders and in other miscellaneous positions. Surely, in a country where unemployment is easily over 50%, they should be able to find a local who can mix a gin and tonic. I also wonder how much the owners of these places pay their employees. My guess is that they're paid better than the average Malawian (which isn't very much), but much less than the profits of the business should ensure.

So tomorrow I return to Mozambique. I arrive in Metangula, which is on the other side of Lake Malawi (called Lago Niassa in Moz.). Northern Mozambique, where I will be spending pretty much the rest of my trip, is way, way, way off the backpacker loop. I have yet to meet anyone on my travels who has been to the north; most travelers in Mozambique never venture north of the Zambezi River. There are no hostels in the north, with the exception of Pemba (where it is low season and probably empty); accommodation will have to be sought in local cheap hotels, most of which I'm assuming will be sketchy. The roads up north are crap. Elephants and lions roam free and sometimes terrorize local villages. Traditional religion and medicine predominate. English certainly won't help me as much as it did in southern Mozambique; in some Swahili-speaking areas, Portuguese won't help me much either. It's all very exciting; I can't wait.

Saturday, June 21, 2008

Kande, Part 2

I had a splendid day on the beach. I swam in the warm, calm, clear water, and then Tiffany and I did pilates on the beach. I also got a ridiculous sunburn. So both my muscles and my skin are burning. It is not a good feeling.

I am going to Nkhata Bay tomorrow; the day after, I go back to Mozambique, travelling across the lake aboard what is reportedly a rickety ferry. It stops at small towns along the way and unloads livestock. I can't wait.

Kande

Kande is a village very close to the sandy shores of Lake Malawi. An Englishman has put up a lodge on the beach, and that is where I'm staying. I've been here two days and am staying a third night.

People in this village are extremely friendly. The bus lets you off on the highway, about a 3km walk from the lodge. The walk took me about an hour and half, no because it was particularly difficult, but because I stopped and talked to random people every 200 metres or so. People are very curious about foreigners. That I'm Canadian is also beneficial in Kande: CIDA (the Canadian International Development Agency... I think) is doing a project here. I met a guy named Banjo. He offered to give me a tour of the village and the school, and then to have me over for dinner. Obviously this was going to cost me, the price was $10. Remembering the wild night I had with Vanesio in Vilankulo, I happily accepted.

The next morning, I went to meet Banjo outside my lodge. Except he didn't show up. In his place came his twin brother, who I met on my walk to the lodge the day before. His name was Mel Gibson. That is a nickname; in Kande, I have also met a Donald Duck, a Georgie Porgie, and a Mr. Loverman (Shabba!). Mel Gibson did the ''tour'' - it was less a tour than an organized attempt to extract money from me. Not that I necessarily hold it against Mel Gibson; he and his family are obviously extremely poor, and I can't really say that I wouldn't do the same if I was in his position. But it was very uncomfortable for me. I had high hopes for yesterday - it strikes me as rare that villagers are so open and so accessible to travelers. The day before, after I had dropped off my backpack, I spent 3 hours on the beach watching fishermen. They insisted on showing me exactly how they fished, what kind of bait they used, and they insisted that I go out on a rickety wooden canoe with them. Later, a woman in the village insisted that I watch her pound cassava into flour in a gigantic mortar and pestle. So I was hoping for a really interesting and enlightening tour, a cultural exchange of some sort.

Don't get me wrong - Mel Gibson took me all around the village, led me into the local school, the local hospital, and deserves compensation for his efforts. I understand that relations I will form with locals in developing countries will almost always be of the cash-for-a good time variety. But there is a difference between that and what happened to me yesterday. After a brief tour around the village, we went to Mel Gibson's house, along with his brother Golden. There he sat me down and explained that I was his brother, his Canadian brother, and that families help each and that he would appreciate any assistance I could provide him. I assumed he was referring to a tip after the tour, which is expected and fair. But instead he brought up driving school - he asked me to provide 40,000 kwachas for him to take driving lessons. 40,000 is somewhere in between $250 and $300. I told him, in the nicest way I could muster, to get stuffed. He seemed OK with that... but he kept referring to me as his brother, and saying that his house was my house and that I should sleep there, and blah blah blah. That made me really uncomfortable. I know how families work in Africa: if one member is lucky enough to have a good job, he/she is expected to support the rest of the family. I could see where the day was headed.

The school was interesting. I spoke to the headmaster, and he outlined some of the problems and challenges that the school faced. He then asked a donation. I happily provided one. Then we went to the craft workshop in town. Mel Gibson does crafts too, and I was pressured to buy one of his various trinkets. Because, of course, I was his brother and brothers help out their family, right? Every time he referred to me as his brother, I wanted to punch him in the face. I much prefer the hard sell that is common in Mozambique - ''hey, white boy, buy my stuff". The kind of sales pitch I experienced yesterday makes me really uncomfortable. I ended buying something, hoping I would be left alone after that. I was not. Mel Gibson insisted I played bao (a very common, and fun, African table game) with him for an hour, and afterwards he spent half and hour cajoling me to buy a bao set from him. I refused.

After that was lunch. We had cassava with a little bit of meat, beans, and spinach. It wasn't very good; Malawian food is extremely mediocre. I was spoiled by the food in Mozambique. Moz. is a poor country, but food is abundant: tropical fruit grows like weeds in the fertile soil, and great hauls of seafood come from the Indian Ocean. There will always be enough food in Mozambique, the only issue is whether or not the locals will have enough money to pay for it. Malawi, on the other hand, is basically slab of mountain with very poor soil for growing anything other than tubers (and marijuana - Malawi is alleged to the have the best weed in Africa, and it costs 10 cents a gram. No, that is not a typo). The dearth of food is noticeable as soon as you cross the border - the giant stacks of fruit so ubiquitous at roadside stands in Mozambique are completely nonexistent in Malawi. People eat what they can grow, which most of the time is a little bit of maize or cassava, soaked, dried then beaten into a flour. Water is added, which makes a paste after vigourous stirring. It doesn't taste very good, but it's filling.

After lunch, my "brother" broached the topic of money a few more times, but by that time I had grown quiet and withdrawn, as I usually get when confronted with unpleasantness. I mumbled a refusal and an apology. We sat around in stony silence for like an hour, until Mel Gibson got the point and asked one of his brothers to walk me back to the lodge. On the way back, the brother, who's name I have forgotten now, asked me to send him money from Canada since he was a student and needed to pay for various things. *Sigh*

I had already paid for dinner so I decided to go back to their house to eat another mediocre meal. I was subjected to a long lecture about how I was their brother and brothers are supposed to help each other. There were brothers there that I had never met before. It was clear that it was hoped that I would be a sugar daddy for the entire village. I was sullen and didn't speak. After dinner I left. They invited me back the next day, but I have no intention of going. I've had enough, my brain hurts. I've been here two days and have done very little beach bumming, I've been in the village most of the time. So today is devoted to the beach. I have met my first A++ travel friend in Kande, a nurse from Calgary named Tiffany who is going to Zimbabwe two days before the elections to volunteer at a hospital there - amazing. We are going kayaking in the lake. It will be my first time on a kayak since I almost drowned in the Pacific Ocean off of Playa Tamarindo, Costa Rica, in February 2007. Should be a blast.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Mzuzu

I have little to say about Lilongwe except that it sucks and I'm glad I'm out of there. I went there for two pieces of business, which I accomplished successfully. First, I needed to get a fresh Mozambican visa. Second, I wanted to buy a new memory card for my camera.

I am now in Mzuzu, which is the main city in northern Malawi. I just got here so have little to say, except that I walked through town and nobody harassed me, not even once, and I am quite glad for that.

I would also like to take this opportunity to publicly thank my mother, who bailed out my sorry ass by wiring money to the organizers of the Guca festival on my behalf. So I'll actually have something to do in Serbia. Thanks Mom! I figure this is worth at least one Greek grandchild, no?

Monday, June 16, 2008

Lilongwe, Malawi

This is the story of how I became a Mozambican firefighter, drank palm wine in a Vilankulo slum, was almost robbed (kind of) and ended up eating Korean food in a totally different country.

So on my last day in Vilankulo, I went on a dhow safari to the Archipelago de Bazaruto. It was a waste of time and money, but is important because a guy named Vanesio arranged it for me. He also arranged trips for the two Dutch guys I was traveling with (Kjeld and Rainier are their names). He approached me on the street and said that he worked with a guy named Rodrigues who did dhow safaris. It sounded sketchy - I asked him where the office was, or to show me the boat I'd be going on. I didn't really get any satisfactory answers. I stalled for an afternoon while I waited for the Dutch guys to get back, but Vanesio intercepted me before I could find them. So I agreed to pay him on behalf of "Rodrigues"; I was convinced it was a scam.

Turns out it wasn't. Kjeld and Rainier vouched for Vanesio and Rodrigues. We had beers later and ran into Vanesio. He invited us over to his house for dinner the next day. His girlfriend was evidently an amazing cook and would make us matapa with crap. It would cost us sabout $10, which is about normal price in Mozambique when crustaceans are involved. We agreed.

On Friday morning, I met Vanesio at 8:00 AM and we began walking to the dock where the dhow was anchored. On the way, we saw a house on fire. There are no firefighters in Vilankulo; there is barely running water in Vilankulo, and there aren't any high pressure hoses. People were running down to the beach, filling buckets with water and then hurling it into the flames. Those without buckets took armfuls of sand and did the same. Half the town was there. I ran back to my hostel and got some buckets, and joined in the fight. Some burly dudes appropriated my buckets, so I switched to throwing sand. Eventually we subdued the fire. The frame was still standing, but was severly damaged. The roof, which was made of straw, was completely ruined. More importantly, we saved the bar next door. Because god forbid a bar burns down.

After the dhow trip, it was time for supper. Since Vanesio worked in town and spoke perfect English (extremely rare in Mozambique), I assumed he was relatively wealthy. Turns out he lived in the slums of Vilankulo, probably 3 km away from the city centre. He lived in a small shack made of sticks with a thatched roof. So did everyone else in that area. His girlfriend, Giovencia, prepared absolutely fantastic food, matapa with soft shell crab. Most Mozambican food is amazing, that has been the definite highlight of my trip here. The local staple is allegedly xima, which is cassava grain. But it seems like nobody bothers eating that if something else is available, like rice or very tasty Portuguese style bread. Chicken is the most widely available meat, and it's usually served with piri-piri (which, by the way, is Mozambican in origin). On the coast, there are amazing prawns and fish and squid and crayfish. There are also all sorts of local greens too, like matapa, which is the leafy part of a cassava plant. And the fruit... oh my gosh don't get me started. I've had the best pineapples and bananas and mangoes of my life here, better even than in Central America.

We ate way more than $10 worth. I had two servings of matapa and crab (served with rice), and then an entire barracuda. Vanesio said that I ate like a Mozambican because I suck every last ounce of meat from the fish head; that may be the best compliment I've received in a while. While we ate, random people showed up. There was a 60 year old man, possibly drunk, who spouted complete nonesense. Mozambicans are unbelievably respectful to seniors, so we were forced to listen. But hey, I figure that if you live until you're 60 in Mozambique, you should be able to do whatever you want. Vanesio's friends stopped by. There was Maneiro, Benny, Paul (not his real name, I didn't get why he used a pseudonym) and a bunch of other guys who didn't say much. After we finished the meal, these guys began engaging in the preferred pastime of most Mozambican men: getting incomprehensibly drunk. There was beer, wine, local gin; I finally tasted palm wine and it was amazing; I also tasted some local brew that shockingly didn't blind me. Before long everyone was crocked, which was a bad idea for me as I had a 4 AM bus the next morning, and having a great time. I speak Portuguese better when I've drank palm wine. Eventually Paul, who is a street hawker, tried to sell us random knick-knacks and the discussion turned to money and became sullen; but this only lasted a while and we were soon having a good time again. At 11:30 PM, we left; the Mozambicans had to walk us back to town because there was a 100% chance we would have been jumped if we walked alone. There were parties everywhere in the slums, and we stopped at a few. In contrast, the town was completely dead but we hit a few bars anyway. I finally got to sleep at about 1:00 AM and woke up two hours later with a raging headache.

I am guessing that 0.000001% of visitors to Mozambique have experiences like that.

I realized in Vilankulo that I needed to visit another country. My Mozambique visa lasted for only 30 days, which is shorter than my trip. The penalty for overstaying a visa is about $500 US, so that was not an option. I decided to go to Malawi, and began making my way there after I left Vilankulo. The first stop was Chimoio, dusty impoverished city in the interior. I was hoping to organize a trip to the Gorongosa National Park from there, but I learned that the park has upped their fees by about 200% in order to cater to rich travelers. It was disappointing, since Gorongosa promised to be my best and perhaps only chance to go on safari and see large animals. I probably won't get to do that now. There was no reason to stay in Chimoio. I hated that town and felt very unsafe there. Someone tried to rob me there, kind of. I was walking back to the hostel when the following exchange happened:

Random Mozambican (angrily): HEY WHITE! WHITE! WHITE!
Me: Hello, how are you?
RM: Let's go have a party. (points menacingly to an abandoned building)
Me: No, thank you.
RM: Fuck you! (Gives me the finger)

A rather crude at robbery, and now I can actually laugh about it. But at the time I was quite shaken. I thought the guy was going to take a run at me, so I had balled up my fists. I would have punched him in the balls, I fight dirty. That was definitely the nastiest exchange I've had with anyone on any of my travels.

I left Chimoio the next morning for Tete, where I got a room from a sullen woman who barely spoke Portuguese. There was no running water or electricity and the shower consisted of a bucket filled with water. The next day, I took two chapas to the border, where I got to see how corrupt both these countries are. On the Mozambican side, people passed their passports to the agents with money in them; a Zambian guy I met told me that Mozambican customs agents outright refuse to stamp passports if they're not payed first. Mine was stamped with little fuss. The same exercise was repreated on the Malawian side, but this time I was asked for a bribe. I calmly replied that I knew that Commonwealth countries didn't have to pay for visas in Malawi, and if the agent liked we call my embassy in Lilongwe to double check. That did the trick.

I am now in Lilongwe, and I ate Korean food last night because the place was right next door to my guesthouse and people in Lilongwe tend to get stabbed if they walk around by themselves. It was the worst Korean food I've ever had in my life.

Thursday, June 12, 2008

Vilankulo

So this isn't exactly Paradise like Tofo, which isn't to say that it isn't extremely touristed. It's a different kind of tourist. Rather than bursting at the seams with backpackers, Vilankulo caters more to well-heeled South Africans, arriving by plane from Johannesburg to stay at expensive lodges just off the coast, in the Archipelago de Barazuto. I am going there tomorrow, on a day trip. There are actually only two people staying at my hostel, the other one being an Aussie fellow named Lachlan who is years old, just out of high school, and travelling up the Indian Ocean coast camping. Definitely not what I was doing at the age of 18. Our dorm is actually open air. Even though it gets pretty chilly at night, that's fine by me - my mattress is covered by a mosquito net and plus, it's rather nice going to sleep listening to bats fly around and hearing the wild dogs cry out in the night, as they grow restless longing for some solitary company.

My ride here was pretty wild. I had to catch a 7:00 bus out of Tofo. I was supposed to catch it with some Dutch guys, but I woke up late and hurried to the bus station rather than meet them at their campsite, as planned. They weren't at the station, but I got on the bus anyway. The bus drove at great speed with the doors open, slowing only to let people standing along the road jump on. The bus went only as far as Inhambane, which looked like an interesting place. But I was there only to catch a ferry to Maxixe. The jetty was two blocks away from the bus station, but it was under construction. A temporary one has been constructed, basically a bunch of 2 x 4s nailed together and reinforced. It was rickety, and it creaked a lot. The boat was a 15 seater boat with 25 people crammed into it, very common for Mozambique, pushed along by a 20 horsepower motor. It took 30 minutes to cross a very slow channel to Maxixe. Once there, I walked to the bus station, but the buses to Vilankulo were leaving from elsewhere. I started to walk there, but a guy pulled up in a pickup truck and offered me a lift. Mozambicans are ludicrously nice, and offer their services like this all the time. I jumped in the back of the truck and he motored off so fast that I almost fell out of the truck. But I got to the Vilankulo bus station all in one piece.

The "bus" is actually what in Mozambique is called a "chapa": so something smaller than a bus, but which still travels long distances. In this case it was a Chinese-made minibus. In North America, it would have seated 10. In Central America, they would have packed in 15. In Mozambique, they squeezed in 20, plus a formidable stack of luggage. It felt like a clown car. For whatever reason, there was a long discussion between the driver and a passenger about what to do with my backpack. It lasted about 5 minutes, but in the end the driver told me to board. I was assigned the absolute worst seat in the chapa: at the back next to a window, but right over a wheel, and with a steel bar digging into my shoulder. The seats were like concrete. I was sitting behind a talkative fellow who could speak a bit of English. He had a bottle of wine and offered me some - in Mozambique, it's polite when on a chapa/bus to offer everyone some of your food/drink. I accepted. It tasted like kerosene, I'm assuming it was home brew. The guy drank the entire bottle of wine during the 4 hour trip to Vilankulo and got extraordinarily drunk. His questions became more and more strange as the trip went one. At one point, he turned and asked me if I was a fan of Westlife and the Backstreet Boys.

The trip to Vilankulo was extremely uncomfortable. The road was potholed and absolutely abominable. That was the main north-south highway, too. Everytime we went over a pothole my shoulder dug into the bar next to me; I have a rather large welt there now. Something else you should know about Mozambican highways: they are both completely deserted and teeming with people. There aren't any towns. Periodically you'll see a shack made of sticks or corrugated tin in the bush, and every 100 kilomtres there is a service station, which in Mozambique consists of a shack manned by a dude with a bunch of jericans full of gas and a funnel. But people are always walking along the side of the road: white shirted kids hurrying to school, women carrying great weights on their head. The chapa honked at them as it slalomed around the potholes.

A couple random thoughts I had along the trip, which I think illustrate the poverty of this country. When you finally hit a town, people selling everything rush at the bus. I tried to buy a bag of tangerines, which would have cost me the equivalent of one dollar. I paid with the equivalent of four dollars. She didn't have enough change to give back to me. This happens a lot here. Four dollars is a lot of money here; if you don't have small change, you can't buy anything. Secondly, on the bus from Tofo to Inhambane, I found myself sitting immediately in front of the door, and I braced myself to move for a senior when one boarded. But no seniors caught the bus; this was, as I realized, because the majority of people in Mozambique don't make it out of their 40s.

At some point I need to properly discuss Mozambican food, which is amazing, but I've run out of internet time...

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Tofo

I has taken me 10 minutes to open this web page! Long live Mozambican internet connections!

I am in Tofo. If you are moved to look that up on a map, it's north of Maputo, across the bay from the city of Inhambane. It is Paradise. There are white sand beaches and the warm Indian Ocean, which I yesterday used as an ersatz netty pot. A brief boat ride leads you to a coral reef with world class diving. One can snorkel with dolphins and manta rays. The hostel here is built on sand dunes just above the ocean. There is a beach bar and the dorms are located in reed huts with thatched roofs. There are all sorts of backpackers from 15 or so countries milling about. There is lots to do at night, beach parties, full moon parties and the like. It's the kind of place you visit for a few days, but end up staying a month. Like I said, it is Paradise.

So of course, I cannot WAIT wait to move on. I came to Mozambique for some pretty well-defined reasons. First, because I was legitimately interested in its history, politics, music, food, society, palm wine (!!), art, culture etc., and I wanted to learn more about it. Second, I wanted to begin to learn Portuguese, with a long-term goal of hopefully one day being able to research in that language. Tofo, for all it's charms, does not offer any of that. This is the surely the most commercialized place in Mozambique, and there are probably as many backpackers/expats here than Mozambicans. The only cultural insights to be gleaned here are into backpacker culture, something which quite frankly bores me now. Tofo is less a Mozambican beach town than an international backpackers' town, no different than similar places in Costa Rica or Thailand or wherever; my hostel actually is about 99% similar to a surf camp I stayed in at Malpais, Costa Rica, in February 2008 (long time TG Travels readers will remember that I didn't much care for that place). As for speaking Portuguese, that is impossible here. Mozambicans are enterprising people. Pretty much everyone in this town has learned enough English that if you ask them a question in less-than-fluent Portuguese, the response is always in English.

I do not dislike Tofo. It really is quite pleasant, and if I was traveling for longer than five weeks, I would probably stay here longer than two nights. But given my time constraints, and the fact that Tofo clearly isn't my scene, I think it's best if I get back on the road and head elsewhere. I have no idea where I'll end up tomorrow night. Tofo is in a weird location with bad transport links to the north so I may only get as far as Maxixe tomorrow; Maxixe is more or less a highway town with flophouse-type accommodation that should be palatable for a night. The goal is to eventually make it to Vilankulo, which is ironically another backpacker Paradise. This highlights the most annoying things about Mozambique so far. Budget accommodation is relatively scarce and because I'm not camping, where I spend extended periods of time is basically already decided for me. So I'm stuck going to Vilankulo even though I know it likely will not be my scene, because I won't be able to make it further north in one day (or two days, even).

But these are minor quibbles. My trip has gone rather well so far and I haven't even lost my camera yet.

Sunday, June 08, 2008

Maputo

This is my last day in Maputo. I wouldn't say I love it here, but I definitely like it. I can see how it's earned a reputation as one of the more palatable capital cities in Africa. It's physical location is pretty stunning, set on a bay in the Indian Ocean. There are pretty good beaches maybe 1km from the city centre. But it's also dirty, smells like raw sewage in some areas, has the most uneven sidewalks I've ever seen in my life, and many buildings haven't been rebuilt from the civil war (18 years and counting). The thing I like most, other than the communist theme to the street names (I forgot to mention Rua Kim Il-Sung, which is where this internet cafe is!), is how laid back it is. I wouldn't call Maputo chaotic. It's big and loud and bustling and impoverished and traffic careens through the streets at 100 km per hour, but it's not really chaotic. People leave you alone here, for the most part. I spent maybe an hour chilling in the botanical gardens yesterday, and nobody harassed me, not even once. I also like how multiracial Maputo is, which is something I didn't expect. There are a lot of white Mozambiquans - evidently they didn't flee en masse in 1975 as happened in Angola - as well as white South Africans who now live here. There are also noticeable populations of Arabs and Chinese. I'm comfortable here. Wandering around here certainly isn't an ordeal, as it was in many large Central American cities. Or perhaps I'm just dealing with it better.

So what have I been doing? Not a whole hell of a lot. Relaxing, loitering, listening to music blaring from cars, getting lost in the streets. Observing. Going to markets. I went to the National Art Museum and was blown away by the calibre of artist that a small country like Mozambique has produced. There are two really famous Moz. artists, Chissano (a sculptor) and Malangatana (a painter). But I saw paintings in that museum that rival anything Malangatana, or any other artist I've ever seen, has produced. Check out names like Bertina Lopes, Samate and Naguib if you're interested. There are like 10 others that I liked but I can't remember their names right now. There was also some moderately interesting communist and revolutionary art on display, as well as a room displaying the strangest sculptures I've ever seen in my life. I guess a doctor here in the 1930s commissioned a sculptor to recreate boldily deformities out of clay. So this room was filled with sculptures of heads with gigantic bloody tumours protruding out of the necks. I wish I had pictures, but no cameras were allowed in the museum.

Today was all about the ocean. I went to the local fish market, about 2 km up the coast from the centre, with a Zimbabwean/Polish couple I met. The deal was this: you buy some seafood, then there are restaurants in the back where you pay people to cook it for you. The restaurants supply fries, salad and drinks as well. As as we got there, people latched on to us immediately and tried taking us to specific fish mongers. They pretty clearly wanted commission, and were a nuissance. The opening price quoted to us was 200 meticais (like $8) for a kilo of shrimp. Eventually, after much wrangling, histrionics and bartering, we found someone to sell us shrimp for 150 meticais ($6) a kilo, and a kilo of squid for exactly the same price. Then I had to fight 3 or four random touts to take possession of the bag our seafood was in - again commission - and we went to find a restaurant. So then we had to bargain with restaurant owners. Everyone was offering a price of 150 meticais, but eventually we got one man to lower his price to 100. After he sat down, he told us that the 100 was just for the cooking, and it would cost 40 extra for cleaning, etc. I told him to fuck off in my best Portuguese (which is to say, not very well) but he knew he was being naughty and agreed for 100 meticais total for services ($4). So we got 2 kilos of seafood with fries and salad for about $5 each. Pretty damn good!

Mozambiquan prawns are amazing, by the way.

I'm frittering away the rest of this day watching volleyball games on the beach, and eventually I'm going to buy a pineapple from a fruit stand for an extremely low price. That will be my supper.

Tomorrow I go to a beach town called Tofo, where I will swim with manta rays and dugongs. I'm rather excited.

Friday, June 06, 2008

I'm here!

I had to e-mail my Mom to tell her that that my plane didn't crash into the south Atlantic, so I thought I'd post my first entry. I'm tired, but not as tired as I thought I'd be. I usually have trouble sleeping on planes, but this time I dozed on both of my intercontinental flights. My Toronto-Sao Paulo flight was especially good for snoozing since I had the whole row to myself and could stretch out a little bit. I was sitting next to a nervous Colombian on my flight to Johannesburg, so I was crammed in a little more tightly (made worse by the appalling lack of legroom on South African Airways) and didn't sleep as much. Still, it was a pleasant flight - air traffic control sent us close to Rio, and Rio looks pretty damn nice from 18,000 feet.

My Johannesburg-Maputo flight was 75% occupied by a Canadian church group. They are Baptists and they came to Mozambique to convert people. I know that because I heard two of them say that, in basically exactly those words.

I've been in Maputo for about 3 hours, two of which were spent lying on my hostel bed snoring happily. Still, that has been enough time to draw a few meaningful conclusions.

1. Gettimg around Maputo is roughly 600,000,000 times easier than navigating comparably sized Central American cities (Managua, San José) because the streets in Maputo actually have names. Rejoice!

2. An astonishingly high % of the streets here are named for various famous socialists/communists. I am staying on Avenido (is that even a Portuguese word?) Mao Tse Tung. There are also streets named for Marx, Lenin, Salvador Allende, Ho Choi Minh, Olof Palme and a bevy of African pinkos such as Ahmed Sekou Touré, Amilcar Cabral, Agostinho Neto and a bunch of others most people have never heard of.

3. You drive on the left in Mozambique. I'm kind of curious as to how that came about.

4. The drivers in Maputo are insane. I took a cab from the airport - only after the "free ride" promised to me by my hostel failed to show up - and I think I began fearing for my life about five seconds in. At one point there was a traffic jam. Rather than wait it out in, my driver drove went over the dividing line into the right lane and began driving into incoming traffic. Not that he was the only one: enough people did the same thing that pretty soon there was a southbound traffic jam in the right lane too. Periodically a car going north would weave its way through the traffic jam, horn blaring. Insane.

5. I can't speak Portuguese particularly well. I spent my layover in Sao Paulo reading signs, listening to announcements, conjugating verbs in my head and writing down vocabulary words in the hopes that I'd remember them once I touched down in Maputo. Then I said "gracias" instead of "obrigado" to my taxi driver after he dropped me off. Whooops.

6. I am not getting culture shock. I thought I would.

Wednesday, June 04, 2008

It's finally time to go. After I write this post, I will be shutting down my computer, hiding it in the depths of my closet, calling a cab, then heading to the London airport (reason #498549549824 why I'm happy my ticket is from YXU: I can go to the airport 30 minutes before a flight be through security with 10 minutes to spare). I think I've packed everything I need, but then again, I seem to always forget something. Hopefully it isn't my passport or my money.

For people who are into these kind of things, here's my itinerary.

1. Air Canada 7724, London (YXU) to Toronto (YYZ). Departs June 4 20:20, arrives 21:02

2. Air Canada 90, Toronto (YYZ) to Sao Paulo (GRU). Departs June 4 23:15, arrives June 5 10:25

3. South African 223, Sao Paulo (GRU) to Johannesburg (JNB). Departs June 5 18:00, arrives June 6, 7:40

4. South African 142, Johannesburg (JNB) to Maputo (MPM). Departs June 6 9:40, arrives 10:45

Unintentional comedy potential: my sister informs me that the Toronto-Sao Paulo flight, which she once observed while boarding a flight to Frankfurt from a few gates away, is full of extremely attractive, well-dressed Brazilians. I meanwhile, am wearing hemp pants, my Yellowknife t-shirt, my Sarajevo sweatshirt, white socks, and my shitty black crocs. I look like a vagabond. If I'm not stared at with complete disdain at least 15 times by hot Brazilians, I will be extremely disappointed.

Holy shit, I'm actually doing this.

Reason #49054024 why one should never equate "intelligence" with "doing a PhD": I wanted to go to bed early last night and get a 10 hour sleep under my belt before my 30 hour nightmare trip to Maputo. So of course, I went to trivia, drank several glasses of beer, went to the APK, drank more beer, went home much too late, slept poorly and then woke up at 7 AM. *Sigh*

I arrive in Maputo on June 6 in the late morning, and I'm assuming that day will be frittered away sleeping, and maybe taking a brief walkabout to get my bearings. Thankfully, this starts on June 7, so I won't miss any of it. Perhaps it's gauche to make a point of watching a European soccer tournament whilst traveling in Africa, but the locals will definitely be watching too (Mozambique, by the way, produced one of the greatest soccer players of all time) and plus, watching Greece win Euro 2004 in various Central European cities ranks among my most cherished travel memories.

I'm especially curious to observe the vibe during the Portugal games. Mozambique is of course a former Portuguese colony. Portugal was without a shadow of a doubt the worst African colonizers: they were the first ones in, the last to pull out (1975, as compared to the 1950s and 1960s for the French, British and Belgians), were enthusiastic slave traders, plundered pretty much everything of value, left comparatively little useful infrastructure (as I'm evidently going to find out first hand in northern Mozambique), and played domestic divide-and-rule so effectively that Mozambique and Angola were plunged into civil war almost immediately after achieving independence (South African shenanigans had a lot to do with that too). To be fair to the Portuguese, they've tried very hand to undo that legacy recently, not just in Africa but in all of their former colonies - I read somewhere that Portugal provides something like half of East Timor's operating budget in the form of no-strings-attached direct aid (I am too lazy to verify this, aren't I a fantastic scholar?), and I also know that Portuguese diplomats played important roles in trying to end the civil wars in Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau.

Which begs the question - how will the Portuguese team be treated by Mozambican spectators? Will they be cheered? Booed? Will they root for the other team to win? Whatever happens, methinks it'll be an interesting insight into the current state of Portuguese/Mozambican relations.

Monday, June 02, 2008

So it's almost go time, and I'm starting to have that nervous/apprehensive/freaked out feeling I always get before I set off on extended travels. Eeeeek! Tonight I began the packing process. It looks as though my backpack will be half clothes, half miscellaneous other stuff, which is unusual for me. I usually bring as little miscellaneous stuff other as possible, because it's almost easier (and cheaper) to buy things on location once you get there (case in point: the preposterous $5 rain poncho I bought in Costa Rica). So this trip is a little different. For example, I am bringing bug dope from here, largely because I'd read that the stuff most commonly available in Moz. isn't especially good (I'm curious - does that mean it's too weak, or that it's 100% DEET and will make my skin melt?).

There is still a lot of stuff left to buy, so I'm making a trip to Canadian Tire at Wonderland and Southdale tomorrow (really, a gigantic excuse to eat Colombian concoctions at La Tienda). There is additional strip mall dystopia around there so I can pick up whatever I can't get at Crappy Tire close by. I need the following:

-A Leatherman Tool, because I am a real man who kills snakes with my bare hands, skins them with my Leatherman and then turns them into a fine pair of boots. Swiss Army knives are for girly men.
-String, which I will offer to corrupt police officers asking for bribes.
-A flashlight, preferably lighthouse-strength.
-Thumb tacks, because you'd be surprised by how much one can do with thumb tacks.
-Ziploc bags, which will be used to smuggle contraband back to Canada.

I am thinking about maybe buying a lightweight belt, preferably one I won't have to remove when I go through metal detectors. Maybe I'll just lash a rope around my pants, because that is what REAL men who use Leatherman Tools do. I also thought about buying a hat to protect to my rapidly balding head from the tropical sun, but I couldn't find what I was looking for and will tempt sun stroke instead.

I have to start taking my malaria pills in a couple of days. I've never taken malarone before, only choloroquine, so I'm not sure if I'll experience any side effects. There are a lot of people, judging from anecdotal stories and message board posts who choose not to take their malaria meds in Africa, citing unwanted side effects.

A common side effect of malarone: dizziness
A common side effect of malaria: death

Sunday, June 01, 2008

I am now the proud ashamed owner of a pair of black Crocs. Crocs are the ugliest shoes I've ever seen in my life, but people tell me that they're extremely low maintenance and so comfortable that they require no break-in period at all. But the best thing about Crocs is that they cost less than $10 at Zellers (the Ontario Wal-Mart!), so I can beat the shit out of them in Africa, then never wear them again.

People have interesting reactions when I tell them I'm going to Mozambique. A lot of people clearly have no idea where that is, which is fine. And a lot of people immediately ask me whether or not I'd be doing relief work there, with which organization and for how long. This question is often followed by a look of puzzlement when I let them know that, no, I'd be tramping around, eating, lying on beaches, dancing in nightclubs and doing other "vacation" things while I'm there.

It's interesting that Africa is seen by some as a place that needs to be "saved" by caucasoid travelers. That's not to denigrate relief work, or the people who do it; I'm inclined to think they do pretty awesome work. I guess I just find it curious that nobody asked me similar questions when I was on my way to Central America, or that travelers heading to places like SE Asia aren't expected to build houses or whatever while they're there. Perhaps it speaks to a certain perception of Africa in the West, an attitude rooted in White Man's Burden-like doctrines that presuppose that Africa is inhabited by a rather hapless population, making it incumbent on caucasians to go to Africa and teach the locals how to do things properly. Or, maybe not. All I know is that I'm bored of people asking me about relief work.