Day 5 of Captivity

Still stuck in Tete City in our tiny hotel room, not being able to go home and not knowing how long we're going to be here, Szasha and I are going slowly insane. We take long walks in the mornings, accomplishing the pointless items on our to-do list (Yesterday: Ride a tuk-tuk: Check. Find calamidades, used clothing market: Check.) By the time we've done everything we can think of (with some extra aimless wandering added in), we eat a long lunch at our favorite falafel restaurant, always ending the same way.

"What do you want to do now?"

"I dunno."

[Prolonged silence]

"Wanna go take a nap?"

"Yeah, why not."

So we go back to our little room and try to sleep some hours away. The afternoons are spent lying around, reading, trying to keep abreast of the most recent news, and lying around in the fetal position, saying "I wanna go home. I wanna go home. I WANNA GO HOME!"

Pro: New dress!

OK, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration. We've had some victories.  We found a place that makes delicious milkshakes and waffles. Our super-friendly and awesome modista finally finished our capulana dresses and they came out really well. We bought some fun new clothes and capulanas at calamidades.

Even so, this state of limbo is enough to make anyone crazy. We can't go home until the safety and security officer finishes surveying the region to determine if it's safe to return or not. This means that by Tuesday we could be back in our homes, but it also means that he could determine that it's not safe to go back. Nobody really knows what will happen in that case.

I am of course hoping that by next week I'll be back in my village -- hanging out with my neighbors, playing with the kids, and prepping my students for their end-of-trimester exams. However, from what I've seen, things haven't been getting better. Every day in the city we see more truckloads of armed soldiers and riot police. Every day there are more rumors of shootings, re-arming of rebel bases, and attacks. Every day, average Mozambicans get more worried.

Fingers still crossed.

Update: Semi-Evacuation

In the last two days there have been more vehicle attacks on the main highway as well as a prison break and no shortage of crazy rumors, who knows how many of which are true. People in the central provinces are getting very freaked out, and since the situation doesn't seem to be improving, Peace Corps decided to move several volunteers to safer locations as a precautionary measure.

I'm totally fine, in a guesthouse with Szasha and we're waiting for Independence Day (tomorrow) to pass. At that point, we'll either go back to our sites or we'll get sent across the border to shelter in Malawi. We have our emergency bags with us, with all the essential items that we'd need if we do have to evacuate.

Unfortuantely, I've also come down with some kind of illness -- it's super fun to get a call saying you have one hour to pack up your stuff and move out as you're feverishly in bed. Thankfully, though, we got a very nice ride to the city and now I'm safe and sound, hiding in in our room, waiting it out.

On the upside, the dueling political parties entered negotiations again today, so fingers crossed that those go well. Right now, we're just taking it day by day and seeing what happens next.

Political Unrest

For 16 years, between 1977 and 1992, Mozambique fought a brutal civil war that destroyed the country and devastated its people. Infrastructure and economy were ruined, and about a million people lost their lives due to conflict and starvation. After a peace accord was finally signed in Rome in 1992, the country slowly started the long process of rebuilding itself. It's been twenty years, and things improved -- new schools have sprung up, travel across the country is possible, and people no longer live their lives in fear of being shot. Mozambique has come so far.

That's what makes the current political unrest so unnerving. Tensions between Frelimo (the ruling party) and Renamo (the opposition party) have escalated dramatically in the last few months. The last few days especially have been eventful, with several shootings occurring and Renamo vowing to shut down travel and exports in the central parts of the country. On Friday, several vehicles were shot at on the main national highway, resulting in the death of several innocent civilians and left several wounded.

Nobody really knows what's going to happen now. We're hoping that things will calm down, but with elections coming up in November, that seems unlikely. They say the chances of another civil war are slim, since no one has the money or the arms for a war -- and yet, people in our towns are scared. They've started preparing for the worst -- hording food, sending their kids away, and some families have opted to pack up and flee the country.

"They say there's not going to be a war, but this is just how it started last time," said my neighbor. "I wouldn't be surprised in the least if we fall back into violence."

What does this mean for me? A few Peace Corps volunteers have been evacuated from their sites and are awaiting further instruction in Chimoio. For the moment, I'm safe and sound at my house and waiting to hear from Peace Corps about next steps. I've packed an evacuation bag that I hope I won't have to use, just in case. Rumors are spreading like wildfire, and it's hard to know what to believe and what to take with a grain of salt. It's useless to speculate on the million "what if" scenarios, but I find myself wondering just the same. What if armed bandits overrun my town? What if I have to evacuate Tete? What if I have to go back to the United States?

More importantly, what does this mean for the millions of innocent people living in Mozambique that just want to get on with their lives? If this situation spirals out of control, they don't get to leave and go home -- they're stuck in a war zone or have to flee as refugees. As I was filling water today with my favorite little 7-year-old, Linda, it struck me that her life could very possibly get a lot more difficult very soon.

"I heard that Renamo is re-arming in the town where my mom lives," she told me, "I heard it on the radio and I started to cry. I don't want them to shoot my mom. Aunt Páscoa says they won't, but I think she's lying."

I'm hoping that things will calm down. I'm trying to be optimistic. However, looking at the history of the region and the tangible fear and anger that permeates the country as we approach elections, I can't help but feel less than hopeful about how this is going to turn out. Right now, there's absolutely nothing I can do except listen to the radio, make sure I'm ready to go in case of evacuation, and hope for the best.

Lost in Translation

Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear.

Fuzzy  Wuzzy had no hair.

Fuzzy Wuzzy wasn't fuzzy, was he?

Students: Teacher, what is a "bear"?

Me: Bear means "urso." Do you know what that is?

Students: *blank stare*

Me: A bear is a type of animal. It's very big and scary.

Students: Like an elephant?

Me: No, it's carnivorous and has big claws.

Students: Oh! A lion.

Me: No, bears are like this. *Proceed to mime a bear* RAAAAAAAAWR!

Students: .................

Me: Fine. Let's just pretend its a lion, ok? But we have to call it a bear, or the rhyme doesn't work.

An Unexpected Adventure

"You know, someday we should go to Tete City and stay for a weekend," Szasha and I have often told each other. We've heard that it's a fun city, with lots of interesting places to go an friendly ex-pats to meet, but we're usually already on our way home long before the workday is over. A weekend excursion has been on our To Do list for quite some time, but we have just never gotten around to planning one.

Seems fitting, then that our first weekend in Tete came about completely by accident. It turned into somewhat of an epic adventure, actually -- and here's the story:

 PART ONE: In Which Some Drunk Guys Fight About A Car

 

It started off as a fairly normal day out in Tete. We made the rounds to our usual places -- the bank, the grocery store, the market, etc. After a delicious lunch of pizza and chicken, we started the long journey home, taking the chapa to Matema, the turn-off for the road that goes to our towns. At this point, it was about 3:30 in the afternoon, so we figured we had plenty of time to catch a Chiuta-bound chapa for the hour-long journey back to Mavudzi-Ponte.

Unfortunately, Matema is pretty much the worst place in the universe. It's a black hole of misery. Have you read or seen No Exit? Yeah, that's not hell. You know what is? Matema.

Usually, the hour or so that we spend in Matema waiting for the chapa to fill up is more or less bearable -- that is to say, at this point we've gotten used to the people heckling us, the drivers trying to overcharge us, and the cobrador forcing us to sit in the absolute worst seats of the chapa (facing backwards behind the driver, interlocking knees with other forward-facing passengers), and annoying drunk dudes asking us for absolutely everything. ("What's in that plastic bag? Can I have it? Do you have any food? Please buy me a beer. Will you marry me? Are you SURE you don't want to buy me a beer?")

This time, we thought we were having a lucky day -- we only had to wait an hour for our chapa to arrive, and it was with our favorite cobrador, Damião. The chapa filled up with passengers fairly quickly, and we had excellent forward-facing seats by a window.

Just as the driver was getting ready to leave, however, a cobrador from a competing chapa came over and demanded that all the passengers get in his vehicle instead. They yelled at each other about it for a while. The Rogue Cobrador then tried to get in our chapa and drive away -- with all the passengers -- alarming us all quite a bit. Our cobrador, Good-Guy Damião, restrained the Rogue Cobrador by force and pulled him out of the chapa. Of course, the driver and two cobradores all being hot-headed Mozambican men, they proceeded to resolve their dispute in the best way they could think of -- by punching each other.

Now, try to imagine this. You're sitting in a crowded chapa that smells like fish, packed in at the window seat, your exit blocked by about a dozen other people, their baggage, and a goat. Right outside your window, there are two guys beating the crap out of each other, screaming in a language you don't understand and ramming each other into your window, shaking the whole car. The man who is supposed to be driving you home is currently being choked by an insane Rougue Cobrador, and he may or may not have received a concussion, judging by how hard they're ramming each other into the chapa. It's Friday evening, so the sun has already started to go down, everyone's drunk, and instead of breaking up the fight, passers-by are egging them on and taking bets.

It was a less than ideal situation, and what with the recent horrible truck accident still fresh in our minds, Szasha and I felt in no way comfortable getting in a car with any of the involved parties. We made the executive decision to go back to the city and view this as a surprise opportunity to have an unexpected adventure.

PART TWO: In Which Szasha Defeats an Evil-Doer

 

Back in the city for an unintended sleepover, Szasha and I start looking around, trying to find the cheap hotel that had been recommended to us. As she's walking, Szasha gets the strangest feeling that something is wrong. She turns around, but there's nothing there, just some dude walking along with a plastic bag.

Wait. What's that under the plastic bag?

Look at that, it's her wallet, which he's just stolen from inside her backpack.

Szasha grabs the wallet back like a snake striking its prey. She glares at the guy and prepares to say something really bad-ass, something to show that jerk who's boss -- to tell him off like he's never been told off before. And in the heat of the moment, she says the most scathing thing she can think of:

"Hey! That's mine!"

OK, well, maybe not quite as intense as she would have liked, but it was still a victorious moment.

Szasha: 1, Pickpocket: 0.

We continued on our way and eventually found the hotel we were looking for.

PART THREE: In Which We Showered and it was Awesome

 

Long story short, we got to enjoy an air-conditioned hotel room, a hot shower and cold beer.

It was pretty much the highlight of my month

PART FOUR: In Which Matema Solidifies its Standing as Worst Place on Earth

After sleeping in the next morning, we resumed our long trek back home. We once again found ourselves in Matema, waiting for a chapa. After two hours and two unsuccessful attempts, we finally managed to secure passage on the third chapa. We took it as a sign of our changing luck that the driver even let us sit in the front seat -- the front seat doesn't smell quite as much of pee, has more legroom, and has an infinitely better view. The view really is spectacular -- in fact, it was due to this great view that Szasha and I were the first ones to see the oncoming SUV that we proceeded to collide with.

Lovely.

Thankfully, we had only been going about 10 miles an hour and we were both completely fine. But the fact remains that our chapa crashed. Given recent history, given the fact that we were only on this particular chapa because we had been trying to travel safely, it was a bit absurd and I couldn't help laughing out loud.

"This is possibly the most ridiculous weekend of my life," I managed to say in between spurts of maniacal laughter.

We had been at Matema for over three hours and had made it an impressive 20 feet. With the chapa wrecked, we had no choice but to go back to the chapa stop for the third time and try again.

PART FIVE: In Which We Finally Made It

Thankfully, about 20 minutes later we managed to get onto a different chapa and made it home two hours later without further incident. When I walked in my front door, I was so happy to be home that I wanted to kiss that dusty concrete floor.

Feeling just a little overwhelmed by the course of the weekend, we proceeded to spend the evening watch chick flicks and back-to-back episodes of How I Met Your Mother while eating Mac 'n Cheese and cookies.

Still, in retrospect, despite the horribleness that is Mozambican travel, we actually did have fairly good luck. Yeah, we got stuck in Tete for the night, but we got to shower and relax for an evening. Sure, our chapa crashed, but it was just a fender-bender and could have been much worse. Yes, it took us over a day to make the 60km journey home, but at least now we have a fun story to tell.

And thus ends the tale of the unexpected overnight adventure in Tete.

Have I mentioned how much I hate traveling in Mozambique? Yeah. I'm not leaving my house for the next month.

Tragedy Strikes Mavudzi-Ponte

Today, I was planning to write an up-beat blog post about a get-together with all the Tete volunteers that happened yesterday. Unfortunately, our gathering, pleasant as it was, was overshadowed by a terrible accident that took place in my town last night.

Around 8 p.m. yesterday evening, an overloaded logging truck was parked on the side of the road in my town. A caixa aberta (open-back pickup truck transporting people) was coming from Kaunda, our neighboring down 20 km away, and headed for the city. There was an oncoming car from the other direction, and due to limited nighttime visibility and excessive speed, the pickup passed too close to the logging truck, severing the cords holding the logs in place and causing the lumber to tumble onto the pickup and the people in it. The logs, logging truck bed, and pickup truck rolled off the road and crashed into the ditch on the side of the road.

Nine people were killed instantly and three more died overnight in the hospital. Several are still in critical care, and at least two lost limbs. These people were all from my community and the neighboring village of Kaunda (Where my friend and fellow volunteer Szasha lives.)

Today is supposed to be Children's Day, a day filled with joy and games. Instead, the whole town is in mourning. Festivities have been canceled, and the town is crawling with police, nurses, onlookers, and grieving family members. The sound of funeral wailing and crying is constant. One of my friends, a nun, had the unpleasant task of searching the wreckage for severed limbs. School will probably be canceled for the week, as several professors and their family members were injured. The timing of the accident, Friday night, meant that the roads were full of people and families traveling to the city to spend a few days with their loved ones.

While this accident is horiffic in itself, it's also personally very scary for me for two reasons. First of all, this happened less than thirty yards from my house, in the exact spot that I often sit and wait for a ride to the city. Even now, from my window, I can see the mangled remains of the pickup truck lying next to the road. The beautiful flowery area next to the road where Poppy used to roll around on sunny days is now the scene of mass death and grief.

However, even more chilling is the following: Szasha and I had been riding in that very same pickup truck just hours before. We had gotten a ride on it from Tete City to our villages -- the pickup was on its way back to Tete City to pick up more people when the accident occurred. The driver, whom I had thanked for the ride and shaken hands with less than three hours before the accident, is now both injured and in jail, pending charges of reckless driving and manslaughter.

Volunteers like to joke around, trading "worst Mozambican travel" stories. The truth is, traveling in this country is a nightmare. Caixa aberta pickups are obviously unsafe, especially when being driven by a maniac at night on pothole-riddled roads. However, the only public transportation available, chapas, are often just as unsafe -- broken down, speeding, and overcrowded. They do not have seatbelts or airbags and are literally falling apart on the road. Just yesterday, the door of one of the chapas that Szasha and I were in fell off of the vehicle mid-ride. Even if you have the luxury of being in a "nice" car, overloaded and underserviced tractor-trailers being driven by sleep-deprived workers are constantly falling off the roads and crashing into other vehicles.

It's no wonder why so many volunteers (Szsaha and myself included) often opt for the third option: Hitchhiking. Given the choice between a death-trap minibus or a South African family's air-conitioned Toyota Hilux (complete with a roll-cage, seat-belts, and airbags) you can guess which option we prefer. But even that has its inherent dangers; just last year, two Peace Corps volunteers here in Mozambique, Lena and Alden, were killed while hitchhiking in a tragic accident involving a drunk driver.

This morning, I woke up aching and sore from traveling yesterday -- but honestly, I'm just glad to be alive. It was a close call, and I'm very, very lucky that neither myself nor any of my friends were injured or killed in the accident. My thoughts are with the family members of the dozen or so people who lost their lives here last night. In a community as small as mine, a loss like this is felt deeply by everyone.