Third world travel

            From any one of my posts on travelling, you can gather just how difficult it can be to travel in Mozambique.  Even so, it is usually bearable.  Our return trip Lichinga to Cuamba during the last two week break was above and beyond Mozambique’s normal standard.

            Normally, you start your travel day as early as possible but for reasons that are unimportant, Mireya and I were not able to go to the Lichinga chapa station until around 8am.  By that time, the only closed mini-bus had already left and the only vehicle available was a small flatbed truck.  It, too, already appeared full but as per Mozambican custom, we wedged ourselves in anyways. 

            I knew I was going to have an interesting day when almost immediately, one of the new mothers facing me went to breastfeed her baby and, well, missed.  I received a generous squirt right in the face.  Normally, when exposed to bodily fluids that can carry HIV, we are supposed to call our medical staff and start on prophylaxis.  Luckily, though the shot was fairly direct, it still wasn’t much and it’s not absorbed through the skin so I didn’t need to do that but I could imagine how that conversation would go… Excuse me, Doctor Isadora, um, I was sprayed in the face with breastmilk… I need  PEP…

            That was where the humor ended.  We continued to just sit in the Lichinga station until 10am filling up like a clown car with people, sacks, and boxes (some people had been waiting for the chapa to leave since 6am!).  I tried to count our passengers at one point but it became too difficult after getting to 25 adults in just the front half of the truck bed (that’s just adults.  I didn’t include children under the age of 12ish, babies, or cargo… and that was just HALF of the truck.)  I would estimate that we left Lichinga with a minimum of 60 people in the back of that truck. 

            I was wedged down in the bed of the truck between a sack of clothes, a few large boxes of batteries, with my elbow in a newborn’s face.  There were two men sitting basically on me and one was determined to have a full conversation.  I did my best but it was difficult to hear him and I was constantly distracted by the batteries digging into my leg (justified after I found a bruise there the next day).  Eventually, as I lost feeling in my butt and in my legs, I lost my patience for small talk in my second language. 

            With every bump and hole in the road (of which there were many), the cargo shifted and I sank deeper and deeper under the people and boxes.  I honestly thought I would be crushed with my knees to my chest, my feet under the people sitting on me, a box in my ribs, and still struggling to hold myself upright so I didn’t elbow the newborn behind me.  If we hadn’t stopped for a bathroom break, I would have had to demand that the chapa stop because I could barely breathe.

            All this while, you have to remember, that the sun is climbing in the sky over our uncovered truck.  I could barely reach my hand to my face let alone find my water which was in my burried backpack somewhere over by Mireya.  To be completely honest, I had never given any thought to giving up and coming home until that chapa ride.  What was worse, is that if I did want to throw in the towel, I would still have to ride that chapa all the way unless I wanted to be stuck in the African bush.

            This ride continued 5 hours until we finally reached the next city, making for 7 hours in that horrendous chapa.  When we arrived in that town, the chapa driver decided he simply did not want to continue on to cuamba.  Mireya and I luckily quickly jumped into the last mini-bus before it filled up but I’m certain many of the people on the first chapa were left without any way to continue on to Cuamba.  An overcrowded mini-bus, children puking and all, has never been so welcome.

            Peace Corps volunteers get asked all of the time about the differences between life in Mozambique and the States but usually, they just ask about money and celebrities.  Sometimes we wonder if they think about how there aren’t usually 80 people in a single high school classroom or 23 people in a 15 person van because these things are just so normal in this country.  They do.  An older man sitting near Mireya on the first chapa, talking to no one in particular, muttered, “This is the third world.”   That chapa was a dehumanizing experience for all of us.