Friday, January 3, 2014

New Year's Trip

Travelling in Mozambique is always an adventure.  In order to maintain a positive attitude, you must be flexible, willing to make compromises, and prepared to be uncomfortable for long periods of time.  When you travel in Mozambique mentally prepare yourself for nothing going as planned, travel taking hours longer than it should, sweating more than is probably healthy, and cramming at least 30 people into a car the size of a minivan for a trip on bumpy roads at 100 degrees.  It helps to be able to laugh at what Mozambique throws at you and is especially nice when you have travel companions who can laugh along with you.  When I was crammed in a chapa with about 30 other people, had a man standing over me dripping sweat onto my face, a bolt digging into my leg, my arm falling asleep because it was being crushed, and all my bags piled on top of me so I could barely see I felt incredibly lucky to be with a fellow volunteer Laura so we could just laugh hysterically about the ridiculousness of our situation.  And when the chapa stopped to squeeze in three more people with large backpacks, we just thought tiny thoughts and tried to take up as little space as possible while continuing to laugh.  When you are in a situation like that you have two options: you can be angry and hate your life or you can accept what is happening and laugh.  I’m glad I have travel companions with whom I can most often choose the latter.

A quick rundown of the trip: on Sunday I left Zobue for the first time and took a chapa to Tete City, the capital of Tete province about 3 hours away.  I stayed in the city long enough to get some money out of the ATM and buy some cheese, yogurt, and ice cream (yay dairy products!) before taking another chapa to a fellow volunteer’s site in Mabvudzi Ponte.  Mabvudzi Ponte is a town of about 150 people, but has gorgeous mountains around and a lovely river.  After a very sweaty night’s sleep (Mabvudzi Ponte is in the lowlands of Tete so it is much hotter than Zobue and when I travel I can’t bring my lovely fan) we did some hiking around the area and swam in the river.  It was glorious.  The next day we headed to Tete City for New Year’s Eve.  We spent New Year’s Eve at a private Mozambican party that we invited ourselves to since the bar we were planning to go to was closed.  The hostess was incredibly gracious and let us crash her party.  She even gave us free chicken and French fries! Another example of the incredible Mozambican hospitality.  We watched fireworks go off along the Zambezi River at midnight and I danced more than I have in a long time, including the Mozambican version of the electric slide. Overall, it was a great way to celebrate the New Year.  Except for the fact that we had no idea that it was Mozambican tradition to wear white for New Year’s and at least two of us were wearing black dresses, I’d say our first Mozambican New Year’s was a success. 


While it was fun to be in a city for a while, hang out with other volunteers, eat ice cream and other good food, I’m glad to be back in Zobue.  Travelling in Mozambique is tiring!

Jeff and Laura hiking along the riverbed.

Some kind of river bird. Anyone know what kind?

It was so hot this river was like a hot tub.

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