Travel Update #1: Maputo, Mozambique

Last Friday was my last day as a Peace Corps Volunteer; I walked out of the Peace Corps office that day a "free man," about to begin my adventure. Two days later I was gone, on a combie to Nelspruit, with my giant backpack squished into my seat with me. One more day later I crossed the border into Mozambique.

I was fortunate enough to discover that two of my fellow PCVs, Cort and Sam, were also planning on going to Maputo on Monday, so we were able to travel together. Crossing into Mozambique itself wasn't groundbreaking, but very soon afterwards I began noticing that I was, indeed, no longer in South Africa. Among them was the sight of an overpass above the paved highway we traveled on; there were no cars on the overpass, but it was full of a herd of cattle walking across, in their own sort-of traffic jam. English disappeared, replaced by Portugese, which is the official language of Mozambique.

About 10km outside of Maputo, our combie (which, in Mozambique, is referred to as a "chapa"), stopped at a hectic, bustling depot, crowded with people. This was "junta", the main starting/stopping point for long-distance chapas and buses. Immediately as we stepped outside of our chapa, we were mobbed--cellphone accessories, chips, soft drinks, airtime, sunglasses--we were offered it all. Some people just dispensed with any pretense and flatly begged for money. Our bags were in an open-air trailer attached to the chapa, so we grabbed them, squeezing our way through the crowd, and put them inside our chapa. The driver pulled away and drove us into Maputo. Cort, Sam and I looked at each other--well, that was interesting!

Our driver didn't know the streets of Maputo very well, so he dropped us off somewhere in the middle of the city--we had no idea where we were, but we were able to get a private cab to take us to The Base Backpackers on Avenida Patrice Lumumba. I spent the rest of the day with Cort and Sam, and the next morning they left very early for their next destination, Vilankulos.

I've been able to spend some time in the city, walking along its streets. It's very different from South Africa, but I knew it would be. Maputo is chaotic, dirty, and much livelier than any South African city. The streets have interesting names--Karl Marx, Mao Tse-Tung, Vladimir Lenin, Ho Chi Minh--a pattern emerges. The buildings are old and rotting; their once-bright paint faded and peeling and pockmarked with bullet-holes, remnants of the former civil war.

English is very rarely heard here--interestingly enough, the most common languages heard are Shangaan and Portugese, which are mixed into a local dialect. I've had to use my different language skills here--I've been speaking more Shangaan than I had expected to, at the backpackers, walking around the streets, at cafes and restaurants, and mixing it with bits of Spanish and Portugese that I can remember. Every "bom dia", every "obrigado," every "ndzi kombela..." helps. Unlike South Africa, most people's second language here is not English, but Portugese.

Coming from South Africa, where every street holds the potential for a mugging or worse, walking along the streets of Maputo has been refreshing. I still have my guard up, as I have become accustomed to over these past two years, and I guess that is helpful, but it will take time for me to walk along streets and not feel paranoid the entire time. Mozambicans, from what I have seen, usually mind their own business---they haven't given me too many strange looks...except for once, when I saw a woman selling food from some pots on the side of the road, bought the food from her, and sat there on the sidewalk eating. Maybe they had never seen a white person eating on the sidewalk before.

I had expected to leave South Africa and enter "real" Africa, where I could be the only non-black person around. I was surprised when I walked around Maputo to find many latinos, mullatoes, Indians, and whites. It gives Maputo a very Latin flavor, worlds away from South Africa. I wonder if other former Portugese colonies, like Angola, have a similar Latin flavor. South Africa was white-and-black, but so far Maputo has been every shade of brown inbetween.

I had been told to visit the Mercado do Peixe (Fish Market) from everyone who had been to Maputo. Yesterday I decided to go; I walked to a main street where I caught a chapa (chapas here in the city are all labeled with their routes--what a great idea! Why don't they do that in South African cities? I mean, the Menlyn Taxi Association in Pretoria has certain specified routes, but more detail always helps) to Costa do Sol. I got off at the market, in the middle of a wind-storm, and was almost blinded by flying sand. I walked to the market, bypassed some very persistent hawkers, and then bought some seafood. There are just buckets and buckets full of seafood in the place--fresh prawns, calamari, fish, lobsters, clams--at good prices, which are much better with bargaining. The place wasn't as big as I had expected, or as crowded (I was the only "mulungu" in the place at the time), but I bought some tiger prawns and some calamari, and then negotiated with one of the local restaurants inside the market to cook them for me with some chips on the side. I've already bargained more in Maputo than I had in South Africa--there's really no bargaining in that country.

Coming back from the Mercado, I caught another chapa, and was squeezed in the back with three very large women, something that I've gotten used to over the past two years. The woman next to me started speaking in Portugese, and then noticed my lack of fluency in the language, so switched to English. When I told her I had been living in South Africa, and spoke Shangaan, she got very interested. She had once lived in South Africa. And, "that Gazankulu Shangaan is not like our Shangaan here!" she mentioned. That, I knew, was true. She even referred to the former apartheid homeland of Gazankulu--clearly a woman who knew her stuff. She asked if I spoke any Sotho, and when I replied "Aowa, a ke bolele sepedi. Ke bolela hanyane." she was amused. We spoke some more, until I got off of the chapa on Avenida Julius Nyerere.

Maputo has been a nice gateway for me; I've been able to relax here, to enjoy my first days of travel and post-Peace Corps life. Tomorrow I head up to Tofo. I can't wait.

Pictures below:

Maputo is full of old, run-down high-rise buildings.

A busy street.

At the fish market.

Sunset, as viewed from The Base Backpackers.