Malawi - Part 3

There was a knock at the door, opening it, I found a nervous looking Liam. Though he’d just walked out of the house, I pretended to be surprised.

He cleared his throat, “Um, I, um, am here to pick you up for our date...if that’s ok.”

“Oh, yeah, I’m ready now, so ok, so we can go.” I told him while looking bashfully at the ground. I stepped outside and he grabbed me and dipped me low for a silly, overacted kiss. Laughing, we walked to a French restaurant that happened to be right across the street from where we were staying. At 7pm, we were seated by a waiter who told us outright that we ought to order as quickly as possible so he could go home sooner. Ah, African customer service. Much to our waiter's dismay, the restaurant soon filled up, and he would be obliged to actually do work.

(this pic is from the website because we were too busy eating to bother with a camera)

The meal was indeed the long awaited feast we were after. Fresh bread, a delicious salad, goose liver pate, tasty soup, stuffed chicken a la Blou, and Malawi’s famous ‘pommes frites’ (French fries). It is always amazing while travelling how quickly a person can recover from being a total mess. Though I pined for a slinky, black cocktail dress and a pair of sexy red stilettos, a simple hot shower, shaved legs, a new coat of polish on the toes, a dusting of makeup, and luscious French food fixed me up as good as I ever am while on the road.

Since the meal was officially a date, Liam wanted to pay, and since I am notoriously frugal and stress out easily about prices, Liam didn’t want me to even look at the menu and ordered in secret. As our romantic night drew to a close, the check was brought out and Liam placed a wad of kwacha beneath it. Despite explaining to the waiter several times earlier in the evening as to why he was being so secretive, the waiter loudly and meticulously counted the payment from his hands onto the table. One bill at a time. Initially, Liam tried to shush him and get him to go away to do the counting, but this distraction only increased the volume of his voice and his determination to get the job done. Nothing this Muzungu was blabbing about was going to get him to break his concentration! Besides, for heaven’s sake, he was trying to do this right so he could get home!

Defeated, the man across from me placed his elbows on the table and rested a bearded chin on his fists. Our eyes locked and I stifled giggles. A century after the counting began, it ended. Liam gave me his jacket as we walked across the street, tipped invisible hats to the guard, and slowly meandered up the drive. I thanked my handsome suitor for the date, jokingly repeating the cost of the meal several times as I praised the food and the service. With affected ostentation, he boasted of the vast wealth he must obviously possess in order to pay for a dinner of that caliber until we both dissolved into laughs and kisses beneath a cloudy night sky.

At home (as always, I use that term loosely), Liam and I stood in the bathroom as he gently washed and re-bandaged my wounded eyebrow. Since the skin had already closed, I deemed it too late for stitches and decided that Liam’s expert care had been, and was, good enough.

That night, we squeezed onto a soft, twin bed in a warm, cozy room down the hallway of an upper-class home that lay in the well guarded suburbs of Malawi’s southern, and second largest, city. Beyond the borders of the city, a crazy, colorful, immense continent stretched out, teaming with countless peoples, languages, cultures, religions, landscapes and wild animals. Of course there were more dangers to be escaped, thrills to be found, and adventures to be survived, but a soft rain began pitter-pattering onto the roof, and I fell asleep with my face nestled into Liam’s side and nothing but the strange feeling of complete comfort and safety.

Mozambique - Part 1

Not exactly Savannah, not desert, the only mountains were distant, too many hills to be plains, but not enough trees to be forest. Rolling along a lonely paved road, squashed into the back seat of a minibus, I could have been almost anywhere. Ebony women in vividly colored sarongs carrying babies on their backs and baskets on their heads blurred by as we drove past a few grass roofed, round, mud huts. Well then, it would have to be Africa. Brightly painted Spanish colonial style cement buildings soon replaced the huts and I was distinctly reminded of Central America. To my knowledge however, Spain never colonized black Africa. The place I found myself then, was the former Portuguese colony of Mozambique.

Liam, Gavin and I had crossed the border from Zimbabwe an hour earlier on a hitchhike, and had been dropped off in the tiny town of Manica. We were immediately surrounded by waves of annoying locals trying to rip us off and helpful Zimbabweans attempting to get us on a bus for a fair price. Finally, for $1.66, we poured ourselves into the back seat of an overcrowded minibus. Direction East.

Whoomp. Whoomp. Whoomp skid!! We turned around and wailed unintelligibly in unison. The bus slowed to a halt and we pointed backwards. The three of us had been the only ones with luggage and the driver had eyed it thoughtfully before shoving the free-standing back seat forward a bit and stacking our backpacks in a 10 inch wide space. Well, the doors couldn’t quite close, so he roped their handles together, stood back, and called it good.

Fifteen minutes later, we stared helplessly at our baggage splayed out across the hot asphalt. When the driver roped everything back into place a second time, I crossed my fingers.

Arriving in Chimoio, we bought tasty bananas and tangerines for the ridiculously bargain basement price of $0.03 each. Suddenly, the women vendors crowding around pushed us aside. The entire street seemed to be running away as if their lives (or livelihoods) depended on it. Blankets of food were gathered up instantly. Bowls of oranges, chocolate wafers, Coca-Colas, and pineapples scurried by. Two policemen followed. It was a raid. These illegal merchants weren’t paying taxes and Mozambique’s version of Uncle Sam was after them. I was glad we’d already bought ourselves fruit.

Climbing on a less crowded, more expensive 3 hour bus to Beira, our day’s final destination, we had to argue with the crooked driver for 10 minutes as he tried to charge us an outrageous $1.79 each for our luggage. Two sweet Zimbabwean girls sitting in front of us informed me that the rate was $0.71 per bag, and no more. The girls helpfully advised us to get off the bus in feigned protest and it worked like a charm. The dishonest driver quickly dropped the fee to the norm, and I thanked the young women.

Buses outside the first world generally leave only when they are full, and this one was no exception. An hour after we boarded, we still sat waiting. Street vendors knocked interminably on the windows, selling hard boiled eggs, chips, soda, airtime, lottery tickets etc. Eventually, a man did stop by, selling nothing, though it took me awhile to notice his empty hands. Blessing, a Zimbabwean man in his late twenties, asked me where I was from and we proceeded to speak for 10 begging-free minutes.

The bus began to move and I waved goodbye to my new friend, hoping that he would soon be given some of his own namesake. Poor Zimbabweans, so educated, so polite, so civilized. One government, one man, one dictator, built and destroyed them all.

Soon, the land flattened out and both darkness and altitude fell.

At about 8:15pm, our bus deposited us and (happily/luckily) our bags in central Beira. Copious streetlights lining the wide avenues and a healthy number of people out and about gave us the pleasant feeling of safety. Beira seemed to me to be an amalgam of Central America and Eastern Europe. The craziness, smell, and colonial style buildings of Latin America enclosed upon massive, ugly communist bloc apartments. Mozambique’s history encompassed the mixture.

In search of sustenance, we located an empty, air conditioned, Indian restaurant. While slowly enjoying our spicy meal, our eyes and brains locked onto the Al Jazeera English news on TV. It’s a rarity and a pleasure to see global news while in our travel information quarantine.

An hour later we took a taxi to Biques campground. We were pleased to find it was even cheaper than indicated in the guidebook and right, right, right on the beach. We ran to the water’s edge and dipped our toes into the warm Indian Ocean before setting up the tents. Aside from me and Liam’s argument about how best to eradicate the zillion mosquitoes in our tent before bed (I adamantly refused to sleep with stinky, burning mosquito coils), it was a good night following a successful travel day.

Day 1 Budget

$1.40 strawberry yogurt, apple, croissant

$25.00 Mozambique visa

$3.00 visa handling fee

$1.79 plain oily burger L

$1.79 bus from Manica to Chimoio

$0.21 six big tangerines

$6.07 bus from Chimoio to Beira

$3.79 Indian dinner and black tea

$1.07 taxi to campground

$3.04 camping

Total $47.16