January 6, 2011
Happy New Year!
I cannot believe it is already 2011… or should I say I cannot believe how quickly (and simultaneously slowly!) 2010 passed. It was an eventful year, that’s for sure… plenty of ups and downs, maybe a few sideways too. My entire 2010 was spent in Lesotho (with few exceptions as I journeyed to other parts of southern Africa), which amazes me. I never thought I would spend more than an entire year away from America, but here I am, still plugging away.
My summer holidays have also flown by. One year ago tomorrow (January 7th) I swore in as an official Peace Corps Volunteer; in a week and a half, I’ll be starting my second (and final!) year of teaching. Thanks to lots of bus trips recently (gotta love vacations on a PC budget!), I’ve had time to reflect on the past year and sort of figure out what I want from 2011. I don’t know that I have any official resolutions, but I think 2011 will be a good year.
Shortly after Christmas, my friend (Kimiko) and I ventured up to Mozambique. It was quite the endeavor just to get there: 5-6 hour taxi from Maseru to Pretoria, then an overnight bus from Pretoria to Maputo. Now in order to enter Mozambique, one needs a traveler’s visa, which we had not managed to secure before departure. This meant several things. First, InterCape had the right to deny us our seats on the bus (we prayed they wouldn’t and thankfully they had mercy). It also meant that we still needed to get them… so when we arrived at the border to Mozambique, we had to get out of the bus (mind you this is approximately 5am) and run. We ran along all the cars waiting to go through the border, we ran to get our passports stamped out of South Africa, and we ran to the desk where we could apply for (and hopefully receive) our visas into Mozambique.
Now, Moz is a great place (really, I loved almost every minute of it) but in Southern Africa, it is high summer, and Moz is mostly coastline and jungle-ish so it was beyond humid. I’m not quite sure how hot it actually got, but it was definitely a rude awakening from our comfortable air-conditioned slumbers on the bus.
The funny thing about a couple people running for something with a lot of other people around is that it inspires everyone to start running. Soon, probably a third of the passengers from our bus were running with us, as well as some of the locals. I doubt they had any reason to run, but I’m sure when a lot of foreigners are running towards your border post, you feel like you might be missing something. We got to the desk (absolutely dripping) and frantically began filling out the application. Thankfully we were all working together – it was pretty confusing. After a hefty fine and a photo (before which I was not warned, so I look appropriately grumpy), I had my visa in my passport and Kimiko and I were running back to the bus. I’m not sure whether the bus would have actually left anyone behind or not, but the guy giving us directions had us just scared enough to think he might.
Back on the bus, we relaxed and “ooh-ed” and “aah-ed” as we passed mango trees and palm trees and caught an occasional glimpse of the ocean… taking in our new surroundings. Unfortunately for us, the air conditioning on the bus had been turned off, so we were left sweating for the remaining hour and a half to Mozambique’s capital.
Our hostel picked us up from the bus stop so we didn’t have to wait too long before we could go somewhere and shower. That day we walked around Maputo, taking in the sights and sounds (and smells!), visiting the craft market, the fish market, walking along the beach… it truly was (a very hot and humid) paradise.
Along the beach, there were carts where men were cutting coconuts up. We had to try one… several chops and two straws later, we were drinking fresh coconut milk. Wow. We stopped at the next cart. Several more chops and we had two spoon/scrapers made from the shell. We were both in heaven – fresh coconut milk and then the softest, sweetest coconut flesh I have ever tasted.
Next up was the fish market. You could smell it a mile away, but it didn’t smell bad fishy, just fresh fishy. As tourists, we stuck out, and were soon joined by a guy who claimed his name was Joe (I think?). He said he was a chef and worked at a nice restaurant; he wanted to help us find fish and cook it for us. Of course he did. Nonetheless, it was nice to have some sort of a guide around the chaos of a fish market: crabs, lobster, mussels, fish, prawns, clams… they had everything, freshly caught that morning, just waiting for us to buy it, cook it and eat it.
We settled on some kind of fish (forgive me, I don’t remember the name) and relaxed in the shade while our meal was being prepared. Now, I like to think I’ve had some good fish in my life (my aunt’s salmon, for example, or surf and turf on New Years), but this topped them all. I don’t want to even try to put it into words; it was just that good.
Bellies full, we meandered back towards the beach and caught a small rickshaw-like open-air taxi that couldn’t have held more than two people. It brought us around town a while and ultimately back to the craft market. We made some (way too many, ha) purchases and headed back to the hostel, picking up food for dinner.
As we were preparing food and eating, we met some other Peace Corps Volunteers from Swaziland… an awesome addition to our vacation. We were both pretty exhausted, so almost immediately after dinner, we went to bed, anticipating the early shuttle up to Tofo the next morning.
Well, the shuttle that was supposed to be leaving at 6am didn’t end up leaving until shortly after 11am. It turns out Mozambique is also on African time. The shuttle took us close to 10 hours with potty breaks (for all 30 passengers who have been drinking water and other things since 6am) and frequent mini-bus maintenance checks. We were all a little frustrated since this delay seriously cut into our beach time, but there wasn’t really anything to do. This is Africa; deal with it.
The backpackers where we stayed in Tofo was absolutely huge. There was a large space set aside for camping (if you brought your own tent), several tents provided by the hostel with cots inside, plenty of dorms and maybe even a few doubles. I don’t think I’ve ever stayed in such a (relatively) small place with so many people! It had a stage set up for the Tofo Earth Festival (there was live music every night we were there), and of course a set of stairs leading right down to the beach. We stayed in a dorm for 16 people. Yes. Sixteen people. There were 8 bunk beds, each with two mosquito nets (one top, one bottom) and (get ready for it) exactly two ceiling fans to cool all 16 of us down. Needless to say, we sweat through each night; the fans were barely any comfort.
The weather up in Tofo was actually hotter and more humid (I thought at least) than Maputo. The ocean was right there, so thankfully I could “cool down” whenever I wanted to, but as soon as I got out, the sun would dry me off (and burn me), and then I’d go right back to being hot again. Plus, the ocean itself was bathtub temperature – not very refreshing.
Kimiko and I sort of did our own thing most of the time, and that worked well. We each got what we wanted out of the vacation and still had a blast when we were together. I spent a lot of time on the beach and in the water with the Swazi PCVs. It felt like every five minutes (when I wasn’t in the water, bouncing in the waves) I was reapplying sunscreen, and somehow I still managed to burn. I blame the malaria medicine (and the fact that I instantly sweat off any lotion I applied).
On the first afternoon in Tofo, a jellyfish stung me. It was kind of neat to say that I’d been stung, and as silly as it sounds, I was strangely proud of my encounter. The next day, a friend picked one up, discovered it was moving, and also that his hand stung quite bad. I told him we should start a club.
Whale sharks apparently number only around one thousand in the world’s oceans, and almost a third of those are said to be off the cost of Mozambique, specifically Inhambane, where we were. I have several friends (who have also been to Tofo) who swam with whale sharks and couldn’t recommend it highly enough. Sadly, they had more luck than we did. The guide and driver of our boat didn’t have a lot of luck locating any whale sharks, so after maybe 30 minutes of driving around looking, they stopped by a reef and let us hop in to cool down. It felt great to get into the water, but Kimiko and I (and the other ocean safari-goers) swam through a herd (pack? gang? flock?) of jellyfish, and were stung all up and down our arms. I stopped feeling special and started hating the little buggers. As I learned from Finding Nemo, the heads don’t sting, only the long flowy tentacles… which are really hard to see. They’re also longer than (I thought) they should be, so even if you see the top and try to avoid them, the arms usually manage to get you anyway. The second time I got in the water was to try to swim with dolphins who were hanging around the boat, I got stung on the mouth… and called it quits.
The coolest part for me was definitely seeing dolphins. They would come up and jump in groups of two or three, and once got quite close to the boat. I’ve seen dolphins in the Zoo before, where they swim around and around that tank, but this was different. To happen to see many of them out in their natural habitat was incredible, and to be in the water with them would have been amazing.
We didn’t have a chance to go again the next day (even though we could have because we didn’t swim with anything) because we headed back to Maputo, but it is definitely something I would try again! Even though we had pretty bad luck with the animals, it was so nice to be on a boat again. I was counting the months since I’ve been to my cabin and I think it’s close to a year and a half since I’ve been in a boat!
Even though we spent a fair amount of time at the market in Maputo, the market in Tofo still drew us in almost every day. The mangoes cost 5 to 10 meticais ($1=m32) and were absolutely perfectly ripe. I learned how to peel them with my teeth (thanks to my friend from Grinnell for inspiration!) but still got juice all over every time. The produce was stunning – so many bright colors of every fruit and vegetable; I was in heaven. The arts and crafts were also beautiful: paintings, wood-carvings, jewelry made from bone and shell and wood… it was hard not to want to buy everything. All the artists had a story: one learned their trade from his grandfather; one was trying to get through school and did art on the side to pay the bills… each greeted us with a smile and tried to charge us way too much. From everything I read, the markets have two prices, one for the natives and one for the tourists, and bargaining is expected. I’ve never been particularly good at selling things, and apparently I’m not very good at buying them either. I felt wrong trying to tell these people that their hard work wasn’t worth that much to me, that I didn’t want to pay (the equivalent of) $10, I would only pay $3. I got over it enough to buy souvenirs.
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Unfortunately, I’m currently running out of time in town before things start to close up, so I’ll end this, my Moz: Part 1 update, and promise to write more later.
Hope all is well in the wonderful land of America!
Love from Africa,
-Katie
