Something Surreal:
Our last ride from the inland out to the long sought after waters of the Indian Ocean was in the back of a truck. There is nothing unusual about that anymore. This particular truck was outfitted with wooden bench seats and an iron frame overlaid with thatching to form walls and a ceiling. Kyle and I were the first two to board, so we initially experienced the enclosed truck bed while it was otherwise empty. Raised eyebrows and head nods were sufficient to communicate our shared approval of this form of transport. Then more people began to board. Men began to board. Children began to board. Ancient women began to board. Women carrying infants began to board. Pregnant women began to board. Pregnant women carrying infants began to board. Pregnant women carrying infants accompanied by children began to board. Squeezed so tight that I began thinking it might actually be safe to have so many people in a car because if we were in a collision no one would have any space to move at all, more people approached the rear of the truck. Despite the ridiculous rides I have had in the past months, I looked incredulously as people neared the truck and thought, “This is impossible.” People began climbing on top of the thatched iron frame. Others hung on like the guys and gals who scoop up your garbage cans. When the truck sputtered forward Kyle and I estimated, because that’s all we could do, that well over thirty people were somehow using this basic pick-up truck to get to their destination.
Upon arrival, after Kyle and I had assertively cornered and retrieved our change from the punk “taxi employee”, for lack of a better term, that tried to pocket our cash and play it off with some half Portuguese half English nonsense, we walked to the campsites near the shore. It was around 5 or 6 o’clock, the sun was beginning to drop, and Kyle and I set up camp and then walked out onto the sand and into the water. The water was not too hot, not too cold, but just right. A few whoops and hollers escaped our lungs, but then after a long and tiring trip the two of us just sat or floated in the mild ocean wordlessly for an unknown, significant amount of time.
The next phase of our South African circuit was a series of two or three day stays on the shore divided by south-bound rides down the coast to the next beach town.
Vilanculos, where we first were immersed in the Indian was where Kyle and I first drank coconut milk, chomped the insides of a coconut, and sipped “sura” which refers to the low budget coconut rum. It was also where we found a seafood market where fishermen bring their catch straight in from the sea. We sat at a table here to chow down on freshly cooked fish and porridge for 20 Mets (about 60 cents). We also bought, if memory serves, three dozen crabs, vegetables, and fruit for only a few US dollars which led to an approximately 4 hour feast that we shared with some of the other campers and campsite employees.
Ponta Barra, the next stop south, was a more isolated and remote point, and we arrived off peak season. We camped near a lighthouse on a ledge overlooking the shore. On the walk to the lighthouse campsite, we passed handfuls of small wooden boats sitting on the sand, and I could not stop envisioning myself on the beach from the last scene of The Shawshank Redemption. Our view from the ledge was such that I once sat down to read and ended up sitting in the breeze staring out over the water for an indeterminate amount of time because I simply could not bring myself to take my eyes off the horizon – and I really, really like to read.
Tofo is a beach town that some of the campers at Barra sneered at as “touristy” and “commercial”. It is certainly more heavily trafficked than our first few campsites, but let’s just say it’s not even a fraction of Ocean City Maryland. On my favorite day in Tofo, I ate some fresh fruit for breakfast, did some laundry, showered, air dried in my trunks, and then read on the beach for several hours.
Our final stop in country was the capital, Maputo. A bus ride took us into town, and a map helped us locate the “budget” hostel accommodations. Maputo is one of the first real “cities” that I had walked through in Africa, and its street signs are a testament to the left-wing histories of the majority of the South African nations. It’s a little funny to walk through “Karl Marx Street”, a little weird to cross “Che Guevara Street” or “Vladimir Lenin Street”, and when you see “Robert Mugabe Street” a person who is vaguely familiar with the names of the world’s most wanted like me thinks “Wait, isn't he a piece of sh**?!?”
On the upside, your average Moçambiquan doesn’t fully understand who these people are or were, and I found the citizens of the place to be friendly and helpful. Kyle and I managed a day of walking and weary sightseeing, and the remainder of our stop was spent in the hostel watching marathons of the Simpsons and Scrubs. We initially justified this by saying that it had been five months since we had vegged on a couch and that every once in a while a good TV marathon is just what a body needs. In hindsight, I now understand that our indolence arose out of utter exhaustion.
Intercape Mainliners, a South African bus company, provided the transportation for the remainder of our circuit. Our last leg was three phases, staying a day and two nights in Johannesburg, and one day in Uppington, South Africa. The most remarkable incidents in this journey are the following:
I bought a monkey skull in a market in Moçambique, and apparently luggage containing the bones of a primate’s head does not raise any alarms when they pass through an x-ray machine at the South African border.
In Johannesburg the marathons continued and I watched the first three Rambos consecutively.
After alighting from the mainliner in Uppington an Intercape employee asked me what city I was connecting to. When I explained that I was staying there for the night, she said, “In Uppington?”
When Kyle and I entered a mall in South Africa, we saw that the “You are here” map had a touch screen, and our exclamations drew a lot of attention.
Back in Windhoek we stayed in a hostel and met our fellow Worldteachers as they arrived. A few weeks later I learned that several volunteers had voiced concerns amongst themselves about Kyle and my health. Apparently I was visibly tired and frighteningly skinny. I do know that I took some SERIOUS naps, and that I had an appetite like I have never had before or since. I ate almost non-stop the entire week I was in Windhoek. When Kyle and I had to decide between two hostels we took the slightly more expensive option because it offered a complimentary breakfast buffet that we dominated every morning. We arose at the start of the meal, stuffed our faces, returned to our tent to nap, and then awoke again a few hours later to get a second enormous breakfast before the staff put away the food.
I still have a lot more traveling that I hope to do in the several decades that the average human is blessed to live on Earth, but I think I can begin to say without boasting that I have seen a fair few places. What I cannot deny throughout these journeys is the constantly building awareness that the more different places you see, the more you learn how all human beings are the same everywhere. It’s more than the fact that almost all South African cultures greet in similar ways, or have identical handshakes, or eat comparable foods. It’s the more fundamental motivations, desires, and emotions that we seem to all share. A small boy at the orphanage in Zambia would not let go of me for the majority of our visit. I thought it was a little strange until Kyle pointed out to me that the child probably behaved that way because he had lost his parents. Joseph once abruptly changed our conversation topic with a worried question, “Where is Albania?” and we discovered that his son’s military unit was recently transferred there. Our Great Zimbabwe Ruins tour guide kept getting too far ahead of us on the tricky rock climbs, and she smiled and said quietly, almost to herself, “My friends always say I walk too fast.” One of our Moçambiquan truckers who spoke no English handed Kyle and I a handful of nuts each after he bought a bushel, smiled and nodded at us, and then turned around to resume pumping his fist and nodding his head to the music on his stereo. And even one of the border employees, after we explained that we did not have the currencies he needed in the amounts he needed, rubbed his head and took a deep sigh, obviously resenting the fools in front of him that were making his job more difficult.
Well, that’s enough philosophizing, I’m hungry.
July 21, 2010
Stamp 8: Entering Moçambique
Joseph is a middle-aged, slightly jaded, South African businessman who provides construction equipment for various jobs throughout the southern portion of Africa. He still gets a little disgruntled at all of the nonsense that one must put up with when trying to accomplish something in this part of the world (unnecessary paperwork, useless and unreliable people on the other end of the phone or right in front of you, horrible roads, etc) but he knows his way around and through a few loopholes. With his presence behind us, and his transport, Kyle and I were able to successfully pass through a border post that by the looks of it almost no one uses at all (when I showed the border attendant my passport as I departed Moçambique he had to ask a superior if the entry point he saw on my visa was a real place) and put some serious miles behind us on our way through the less developed northern part of the country. He absolutely refused any cash in return for taking us along, but since we gathered that he was a fan of cold beer, when our caravan came to a stop for the night in a small town Kyle and I bought a few to share with him. We spent an enjoyable evening talking to him about everything he knew of Southern Africa from years of living, traveling, and working, and when it was time to turn in we pitched our tent next to his truck on the side of the road.
We got up bright and early because according to Joseph our agreement with the police was that we could camp by the road if we had packed up our tent by six in the morning. Another seven hours of traveling lay ahead of us before we reached Tete, the city where Joseph and our paths would diverge.
After saying our goodbyes in Tete, Kyle and I struggled in spite of the heat to find a ride to our next stop. Tete is considered one of the hottest places in southern Africa, and for good reason. I was reduced to simply sitting with my head down in the small amount of shade afforded by a car door, and could manage to do nothing else. How anyone in that town accomplishes anything, let alone works in pants, a shirt, and tie, is utterly beyond me. Luckily, one of Joseph’s hired caravan members offered to take us even farther. Our journey with the now legendary (between me and Kyle) “Jordan Boss”, as the decals on the side of his compact proclaimed, came to an abrupt end when he was stopped for speeding. His Portuguese conversation with the arresting officer was incomprehensible except for the word “Americanos” as Jordan Boss pleaded his case. This pitiful attempt failed, and apparently Jordan had a little more than speeding on his record because the police confiscated his vehicle and stopped the next passing Mack truck to carry us to our destination.
The next legs of our journey consisted entirely of brief hostel stays while utterly exhausted and long days of traveling in truck cabs with infrequent stops and little to eat.
Things that happened while in a truck:
1) The driver stopped for over thirty minutes to successfully negotiate the purchase of a goat.
2) The driver stopped for over thirty minutes to talk to an old man.
3) The driver’s wife closed a curtain in front of us and motioned for us to lie down as we passed through a provincial border and weigh station.
4) The driver absolutely jammed out to a mix CD featuring Rod Stewart, Brian Adams, and Sting.
5) The driver turned down our (facetious) offer to pay him in bananas after he offered us what was obviously a tourist price hike.
Our breakneck trek to the Indian Ocean just so happened to contain the one and only incident in which Kyle or I obviously and seriously offended a local (unintentionally of course). In Moçambique bananas are ridiculously cheap. You can buy whole bunches for just a few Mets (which in turn are fractions of dollars), so Kyle and I subsisted on bananas, bread, and banana sandwiches during our truck traveling days. In southern Africa most everyone litters. While I pride myself on staying strong when it comes to paper and other trash, I’ll admit to chucking banana peels and other food remains out of bus, truck, and car windows. Whilst walking through a market on our way to a truck stop Kyle spotted an unlikely open metal barrel on the side of the road. I gave him my banana peel after he held out his hand and said, “Here”, and he nodded at the woman beside the can as he tossed our used peels straight into it. “Oh!” she exclaimed wordlessly, and began clumsily dragging the barrel, which we then realized to be evidently full of something, back from the road. Kyle ran up and learned that this woman had been brewing some substance in this barrel; it was not a trash can at all. After a few awkward apologies we put our heads down and made off for our next truck ride negotiation.
We got up bright and early because according to Joseph our agreement with the police was that we could camp by the road if we had packed up our tent by six in the morning. Another seven hours of traveling lay ahead of us before we reached Tete, the city where Joseph and our paths would diverge.
After saying our goodbyes in Tete, Kyle and I struggled in spite of the heat to find a ride to our next stop. Tete is considered one of the hottest places in southern Africa, and for good reason. I was reduced to simply sitting with my head down in the small amount of shade afforded by a car door, and could manage to do nothing else. How anyone in that town accomplishes anything, let alone works in pants, a shirt, and tie, is utterly beyond me. Luckily, one of Joseph’s hired caravan members offered to take us even farther. Our journey with the now legendary (between me and Kyle) “Jordan Boss”, as the decals on the side of his compact proclaimed, came to an abrupt end when he was stopped for speeding. His Portuguese conversation with the arresting officer was incomprehensible except for the word “Americanos” as Jordan Boss pleaded his case. This pitiful attempt failed, and apparently Jordan had a little more than speeding on his record because the police confiscated his vehicle and stopped the next passing Mack truck to carry us to our destination.
The next legs of our journey consisted entirely of brief hostel stays while utterly exhausted and long days of traveling in truck cabs with infrequent stops and little to eat.
Things that happened while in a truck:
1) The driver stopped for over thirty minutes to successfully negotiate the purchase of a goat.
2) The driver stopped for over thirty minutes to talk to an old man.
3) The driver’s wife closed a curtain in front of us and motioned for us to lie down as we passed through a provincial border and weigh station.
4) The driver absolutely jammed out to a mix CD featuring Rod Stewart, Brian Adams, and Sting.
5) The driver turned down our (facetious) offer to pay him in bananas after he offered us what was obviously a tourist price hike.
Our breakneck trek to the Indian Ocean just so happened to contain the one and only incident in which Kyle or I obviously and seriously offended a local (unintentionally of course). In Moçambique bananas are ridiculously cheap. You can buy whole bunches for just a few Mets (which in turn are fractions of dollars), so Kyle and I subsisted on bananas, bread, and banana sandwiches during our truck traveling days. In southern Africa most everyone litters. While I pride myself on staying strong when it comes to paper and other trash, I’ll admit to chucking banana peels and other food remains out of bus, truck, and car windows. Whilst walking through a market on our way to a truck stop Kyle spotted an unlikely open metal barrel on the side of the road. I gave him my banana peel after he held out his hand and said, “Here”, and he nodded at the woman beside the can as he tossed our used peels straight into it. “Oh!” she exclaimed wordlessly, and began clumsily dragging the barrel, which we then realized to be evidently full of something, back from the road. Kyle ran up and learned that this woman had been brewing some substance in this barrel; it was not a trash can at all. After a few awkward apologies we put our heads down and made off for our next truck ride negotiation.
July 7, 2010
More Miscellaneous
The President travels in a helicopter.
Harry Potter books are friggin’ great.
Learners protested against the soccer coach by writing on a large chart paper and pasting it to the administration block.
I saw a learner wearing only a left-hand glove.
Then I saw her friend wearing a right-hand glove.
Then I saw that lots of learners share gloves.
When I walk to the trash hole to dispose of computer boxes, learners take all the boxes from me.
I have no idea what they use them for.
A construction company pledged to pave 50km of the road to my village this calendar year.
As of today they have paved about 5.
Are you all hearing the “Just like a Waving Flag” World Cup song over, and over, and over again?
Porridge is really, really, really, really, easy to make.
I am awesome at making porridge.
When a machine is not functioning properly, it is referred to as “tired”.
There is no one word in Oshiwambo for “promise”.
I watched at least 50 learners climb the sides and back of a cattle truck before they departed for a sports tournament.
Pap, the stuff that the USAID provides for malnourished children, is an acquired taste.
I love pap (the version sold in stores, I’m not taking it from needy kids).
When I saw a table at the grocery store with three white people, I knew immediately the summer volunteers had arrived.
5 power outages in an hour make it much more difficult to maintain discipline in the library.
Roosters crow at all hours of the day and night.
Watching a Namibian 12th Grader eat up Junie B. Jones makes me smile.
Harry Potter books are friggin’ great.
Learners protested against the soccer coach by writing on a large chart paper and pasting it to the administration block.
I saw a learner wearing only a left-hand glove.
Then I saw her friend wearing a right-hand glove.
Then I saw that lots of learners share gloves.
When I walk to the trash hole to dispose of computer boxes, learners take all the boxes from me.
I have no idea what they use them for.
A construction company pledged to pave 50km of the road to my village this calendar year.
As of today they have paved about 5.
Are you all hearing the “Just like a Waving Flag” World Cup song over, and over, and over again?
Porridge is really, really, really, really, easy to make.
I am awesome at making porridge.
When a machine is not functioning properly, it is referred to as “tired”.
There is no one word in Oshiwambo for “promise”.
I watched at least 50 learners climb the sides and back of a cattle truck before they departed for a sports tournament.
Pap, the stuff that the USAID provides for malnourished children, is an acquired taste.
I love pap (the version sold in stores, I’m not taking it from needy kids).
When I saw a table at the grocery store with three white people, I knew immediately the summer volunteers had arrived.
5 power outages in an hour make it much more difficult to maintain discipline in the library.
Roosters crow at all hours of the day and night.
Watching a Namibian 12th Grader eat up Junie B. Jones makes me smile.
July 1, 2010
Stamps 5-7: Zambia - In...and Out?
On the Zambian side of Victoria Falls there is a path that leads upstream of the Zambezi River. Signs request politely that you not stray from the path, but there is a very good location for a sightseer to do just that. Hopping down a small earth ledge on your left hand side allows you to walk out to and then upon a collection of rocks that juts out into the current. To your right, flows of water with momentum in slightly conflicting directions collide with rocks and each other. To your left, maybe 25 feet, these currents plummet over the cliff. And, at dusk, on the horizon directly in front of you, the sun sets. It’s a view that is, as I taught my learners to understate, “Not too bad.”
The Zambian side of Victoria Falls has a few other unique features. Baboons will walk lazily around and even sleep on the footpaths unperturbed by any tourists that may wander nearby. There is also a footbridge swallowed by the spray in front of the falls from which you can see absolutely nothing at all, but you do get hilariously drenched.
After getting our fill of the Falls from all angles, Kyle and I said our goodbyes to Kristen who was heading back to Windhoek. I realize I do a terrible job of including references to the characters in this chronicle, but she was missed. After a packed first 12 days or so of holiday, Kyle and I prudently decided to take…one day…to rest before putting our noses down and shooting straight for Mozambique and the Indian Ocean. After all, the faster we got there, the longer we would get to relax on a beach!
This day of rest included an afternoon at the Lubasi Children’s Home, an institution I feel obligated to at least describe as an example of the kind of organization that is a part of the solution in Southern Africa. Lubasi is an orphanage funded by donations from travelers and citizens alike that takes children in as early as the age of 5 if the circumstances render it appropriate, and keeps them in their care until they finish their secondary schooling. The home employs all local Zambians as hostel matrons to stay with the children and cooks to prepare their food. The home has numerous projects where the children learn valuable skills and provide revenue for daily operations. Arts and crafts made by the children are sold to raise money; chickens are hatched, raised, and sold by the children for the same purpose. The home also has a rather large field which learners cultivate to provide food for themselves and the wider community. There is also a library and an assembly area where learners are encouraged to study and extra lessons are held after the children return home from school. Kyle and I spent a few hours with some of the boys on the grounds playing soccer, basketball, and army (with figurines the kids had sculpted out of hardened mud), and watched the kids do flips off of a tire tilted at an angle in front of a mat of straw after a running start. I managed to get my feet back under my head when I attempted, but I wouldn’t quite call what I did a flip.
Kyle and I arose in the wee hours of the next morning. “Indian Ocean or Bust!” we thought. We caught a large coach bus Northeast to Zambia’s capital, Lusaka, basking in the ease and comfort of transportation with clearly posted departure times and ticket prices. A brief, sunny walk around the capital followed, before we boarded another bus to Luangwa, a town that our maps showed us was close to the Mozambique border, a good crossing point, and had a campsite. After carrying our bags while avoiding crushing Zambian fingers as we stepped on armrests in order to climb into the far back of this bus (either no luggage was placed underneath or it overflowed into the aisle), we squeezed in and gritted our teeth until Luangwa. The policeman at the stop in Luangwa assured us that the campsite, although it was now night-time was a walk-able 2 kilometers down a gravel road. Tired after almost 17 hours of travel we set off into the pitch dark in search of where we would sleep. I will spare you the details, but the walk was definitely more than 2 kilometers, our day of travel was definitely longer than 17 hours, and at my grumpiest I muttered to Kyle that this walk “might be the least enjoyable experience of my life”.
When we woke the next day, Kyle went to freshen up, and I went to settle with the proprietors (usually check-in desks are closed after midnight). I paid for our night and exchanged some standard pleasantries with the European couple who ran the place - and had relatively poor dental hygiene. When they asked me where we were heading I coolly replied that we planned to cross into Mozambique that day via the border not much farther down the gravel road.
“Oh, you’re going the difficult way,” was the man’s response. Unaware that Kyle and I were making a decision that would make our trip even less comfortable, I uttered, “Really?” The couple explained that the road we saw on our maps no longer existed. They further explained that the only way we could travel once across that border into Mozambique was by hitching a long and unsteady ride on a fishing boat, if one just so happened to pass our way. They informed me that if Kyle and I continued northeast a good day’s journey we would come to a town called Katete, which is approximately 50km from the Cassacativa border crossing into Mozambique. I will never forget the look on the woman’s face, a weary mixture of resignation and sincere concern, as she took a deep drag of her cigarette, exhaled, and said, “Good luck.”
I had paid for our campsite because Kyle was running low on cash, which we needed to pay for rides too, and Luangwa had no ATM. Katete, our destination, had no ATM either. So Kyle and I sat by the side of the road in Luangwa hoping for a ride in a place in Zambia so developed that there was not an ATM for hundreds of kilometers in either direction.
Then Joseph arrived. A convoy of vehicles, an eighteen wheeler hauling a caterpillar machine being led and followed by SUVs with flags and signs saying “Abnormal Load” rolled to a stop at the check-point in Luangwa. I wrote off our chances with this troupe because it was way too official looking and put my nose back into “Three Short Novels by Herman Melville”. Kyle, irrepressible Kyle, ran up to the first car and started talking. When he returned he had gotten us a ride. When we asked how much, Joseph, the Afrikaner in charge of the operation, gestured dismissively and said, “We don’t want your money.” Strapped for cash on a roadside, we had gotten a ride, in a comfortable SUV, for FREE, and Joseph was taking his machine all the way to the center of Mozambique. Better luck, I am not sure I have ever had.
The Zambian side of Victoria Falls has a few other unique features. Baboons will walk lazily around and even sleep on the footpaths unperturbed by any tourists that may wander nearby. There is also a footbridge swallowed by the spray in front of the falls from which you can see absolutely nothing at all, but you do get hilariously drenched.
After getting our fill of the Falls from all angles, Kyle and I said our goodbyes to Kristen who was heading back to Windhoek. I realize I do a terrible job of including references to the characters in this chronicle, but she was missed. After a packed first 12 days or so of holiday, Kyle and I prudently decided to take…one day…to rest before putting our noses down and shooting straight for Mozambique and the Indian Ocean. After all, the faster we got there, the longer we would get to relax on a beach!
This day of rest included an afternoon at the Lubasi Children’s Home, an institution I feel obligated to at least describe as an example of the kind of organization that is a part of the solution in Southern Africa. Lubasi is an orphanage funded by donations from travelers and citizens alike that takes children in as early as the age of 5 if the circumstances render it appropriate, and keeps them in their care until they finish their secondary schooling. The home employs all local Zambians as hostel matrons to stay with the children and cooks to prepare their food. The home has numerous projects where the children learn valuable skills and provide revenue for daily operations. Arts and crafts made by the children are sold to raise money; chickens are hatched, raised, and sold by the children for the same purpose. The home also has a rather large field which learners cultivate to provide food for themselves and the wider community. There is also a library and an assembly area where learners are encouraged to study and extra lessons are held after the children return home from school. Kyle and I spent a few hours with some of the boys on the grounds playing soccer, basketball, and army (with figurines the kids had sculpted out of hardened mud), and watched the kids do flips off of a tire tilted at an angle in front of a mat of straw after a running start. I managed to get my feet back under my head when I attempted, but I wouldn’t quite call what I did a flip.
Kyle and I arose in the wee hours of the next morning. “Indian Ocean or Bust!” we thought. We caught a large coach bus Northeast to Zambia’s capital, Lusaka, basking in the ease and comfort of transportation with clearly posted departure times and ticket prices. A brief, sunny walk around the capital followed, before we boarded another bus to Luangwa, a town that our maps showed us was close to the Mozambique border, a good crossing point, and had a campsite. After carrying our bags while avoiding crushing Zambian fingers as we stepped on armrests in order to climb into the far back of this bus (either no luggage was placed underneath or it overflowed into the aisle), we squeezed in and gritted our teeth until Luangwa. The policeman at the stop in Luangwa assured us that the campsite, although it was now night-time was a walk-able 2 kilometers down a gravel road. Tired after almost 17 hours of travel we set off into the pitch dark in search of where we would sleep. I will spare you the details, but the walk was definitely more than 2 kilometers, our day of travel was definitely longer than 17 hours, and at my grumpiest I muttered to Kyle that this walk “might be the least enjoyable experience of my life”.
When we woke the next day, Kyle went to freshen up, and I went to settle with the proprietors (usually check-in desks are closed after midnight). I paid for our night and exchanged some standard pleasantries with the European couple who ran the place - and had relatively poor dental hygiene. When they asked me where we were heading I coolly replied that we planned to cross into Mozambique that day via the border not much farther down the gravel road.
“Oh, you’re going the difficult way,” was the man’s response. Unaware that Kyle and I were making a decision that would make our trip even less comfortable, I uttered, “Really?” The couple explained that the road we saw on our maps no longer existed. They further explained that the only way we could travel once across that border into Mozambique was by hitching a long and unsteady ride on a fishing boat, if one just so happened to pass our way. They informed me that if Kyle and I continued northeast a good day’s journey we would come to a town called Katete, which is approximately 50km from the Cassacativa border crossing into Mozambique. I will never forget the look on the woman’s face, a weary mixture of resignation and sincere concern, as she took a deep drag of her cigarette, exhaled, and said, “Good luck.”
I had paid for our campsite because Kyle was running low on cash, which we needed to pay for rides too, and Luangwa had no ATM. Katete, our destination, had no ATM either. So Kyle and I sat by the side of the road in Luangwa hoping for a ride in a place in Zambia so developed that there was not an ATM for hundreds of kilometers in either direction.
Then Joseph arrived. A convoy of vehicles, an eighteen wheeler hauling a caterpillar machine being led and followed by SUVs with flags and signs saying “Abnormal Load” rolled to a stop at the check-point in Luangwa. I wrote off our chances with this troupe because it was way too official looking and put my nose back into “Three Short Novels by Herman Melville”. Kyle, irrepressible Kyle, ran up to the first car and started talking. When he returned he had gotten us a ride. When we asked how much, Joseph, the Afrikaner in charge of the operation, gestured dismissively and said, “We don’t want your money.” Strapped for cash on a roadside, we had gotten a ride, in a comfortable SUV, for FREE, and Joseph was taking his machine all the way to the center of Mozambique. Better luck, I am not sure I have ever had.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
