Stamps 9 – 12: The Indian Ocean and Back to Windhoek

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.