alone at night on my motorcycle through mozambique

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the things that have happened! i tucked out of mtwara on sunday. saturday night my friend Osman had his wedding party in a strange square roofless courtyard of red brick, big enough to host the entire village inside. the stars and moon and some dusty clouds were the light as a team of young fellows continually fed an old CD player that was hooked up to some very big speakers in the corner. from the far end of the village and up the ridge to the old boma hotel, about two kilometers walk, the Swahili hip-hop came through clear enough. the center of the courtyard was occupied by fifty boys in their mid twenties, dancing away in a very African american brooklyn way. around the edges of this mass some very young children, aged five to ten, jumped and ran around in circles and played little games with each other to the tune of the music. i sat up on a cement shelf around the edge, beside a couple of old ladies, and i giggled and couldn't believe it. nobody spoke, everyone danced with big smiles on their faces, but in the most profound and serious manner. i never did see Osman or his wife through the party. one of the old ladies got up to dance and grabbed my wrist and wanted to dance with me but i recoiled, she went out on her own and danced on the outskirts. i made my way back towards the ridge around midnight, away from this strange affair that was becoming slowly more complicated and dangerous as the night went on. from the ridge i looked down on the courtyard and the village from a comfortable spot beside a couple of cannons on the roof of the old boma hotel. the world is hard to speak about, mikindani at night is a wonderful place to be.

out of mtwara and down towards the border post runs a long dirty road through thick bunches of brush that whip at you from the ditch. the border itself is just a dusty old farm house with a couple of men in police hats stamping passports. as i approached i was passed by six land rovers and their big clouds of red sand. they made the border first and it took them an hour to go through the paperwork for the trucks and i sat and drank orange pop and talked about the weather with an old white man with a long white beard who was part of this convoy. the tanzanian government let my motorcycle out of their country under the condition that i bring it back, they took some collateral, i promised that i would come back but i won't.

the border is a river on which operates only one ferry, and it is a big river. down through some marshes and along a muddy goat path through strange reeds and long insects came this river and the land rover convoy waiting patiently as the mostly underwater slab ferry made its way into view. the ferry was a plank of metal about forty feet long and thirty feet wide with a rusty old control tower sticking up off one side about ten feet and under this a clunking smoking whistling diesel engine. the whole of the main plank sits roughly half a foot out of the water when fully loaded while the front and rear loading planks are actually underwater. three men in the control tower smoking cigarettes, fighting over the wheel, brought the ferry up to the riverbank and wedged the loading plank into the dirt just under a seven or eight foot wall of mud. the three or four shirtless old ferryboat men carrying shovels proceeded to chop a reasonably pitched slope into the dirt bank in order to get those land rovers down. the ferry went out onto the river, which was moving swiftly along and shaking us all around as hippopotamus' reared up on all sides, everyone was very excited.

the land rover convoy had began in cape town and circumnavigated the whole outer skirt of africa, beginning with the west coast, and is now coming back down along the east coast, one of their primary sponsors is captain morgans rum, they are on a sort of malaria awareness campaign. the african river fought with the ferry but we eventually made the bank on the far side. mozambique. from the river there is fifty kilometers before any place to sleep through horrible sand and dirt and mud, the convoy heavily recommended to me not to attempt driving it on this night, as the sun was now setting, they thought it best if i tried to find a place to sleep at the border post, with someone from the village.

once my bike was unloaded from the ferry port i began at once and with all haste to reach palma, the place fifty odd kilometers south on sand paths and lit now only by a setting sun. the bearded man's convoy was still struggling off when I left. within two kilometers of the river a root reached up from the mud and pulled my back brake peddle clean off the bike, the peddle itself disappeared. out of the brush came seven mozambiquan teenagers who insisted to help move the bike along on foot to better road and a mechanic. they all wore curved down baseball hats and old jerseys, ratty feet without shoes and shining muscles in the arms and neck as they all took a hand in moving the motorcycle through the mud. once the bike was clear i thanked them and resolved to ride without a brake on my way. the friendly kids changed into a very serious lot of thieves and each grabbed a at piece of me so that i could not very well continue on until i paid them for their service, they let me go once i had dispensed to them 50$. i bumped along and worried about that and worried about the sunset until i reached the mozambiquan border patrol, a single man in uniform who came running out of his grass hut when i passed, he was an obese fellow with a long forehead and a can of beer and a cigarette going, he stamped my passport and drank his beer. if you can do the job that you have been hired to do in africa, then you have nothing to worry about.

the road to palma from here is a wagon trail, not bumpy, but all sand. it is impossible to steer or go much faster than five kilometers an hour. at every hill the back wheel fish tails from side to side and causes the front wheel to cut so heavily into the sand that you must use your feet as training wheels constantly. at all times both legs must be suspended off the sides of the bike in order to catch it and push up before it lays over on its side. this is how i drove, as the sun made a beautiful sunset and then set for good and all the people of the road disappeared into their brush for sleeping, i continued on in the pitch black. my headlight points slightly off to the left and lights dimly shadows of some imaginary animals and cannibals hiding in the tall grass. the light dances from side to side as i fish tail and jerk and fall and scream all over the ditch. and they say not ever to drive at night in africa because of the elephants, they do not explain what exactly it means to encounter one on the road. i kept on and promised myself everything if i could only come out of this one alive. the night went from being pitch black into a state of black that i have never known and i lost control and got tossed from the bike into the sand. northern mozambique at night without a back brake on a sand road is a terrible place but it was beautiful and horrible and it felt good to pick the bike up again and ride on. my instrument panel is long since gone and i do not have a watch or a map, so it is never clear how far i have gone or how far i need to go. the thought of the village of palma and a bed there and a shower there came to me in clear pictures against the blackness. when you are alone and it is late at night and you are worried about your life, it is very easy to picture things in your head. palma lights came through the woods and i sang and laughed and it had all been worth it.

in palma the locals had out their candles and peanuts on tables and they drank soft drinks, the days drive left me feeling like a ragged castaway bum and i went for the hotel. the only hotel in town and within a hundred kilometers has been fully booked by a team of oilmen up here with computers and satellites and dynamite. the land rover captain morgans convoy went past and i waved and they waved back. someone said that the bearded mans name is kingsley holgate, i've never heard of him. i sat and pouted in the restaurant at a plastic table with a torn table cloth and drank alcohol and my torn body began to slacken. a big drunken south african white fellow lumbered over and said i was the bravest man he'd ever met for wanting to go to cape town this way, his name was Guy and he was building a place for some incoming oilmen to work and sleep across the street from the hotel, out of an old church. he let me sleep there on a straw mat for two nights and he fed me coffee and rice and stories about his life. the church was built by a german missionary some years ago, it is beautiful and painted up in the most fantastic neon colors of scenes from the bible, it is a sunday school on the premises that Guy is converting. he let me off with a full slip of contacts all down the coast and in cape town and i prayed in church and left palma for mocimboa de praia to get a new brake lever.

the road was paved and half way down, without a brake to stop with, the entire length of the exhaust pipe tumbled off onto the road and bounced into the ditch. it took me some time to cool it off and strap it onto the bike and continue on. in mocimboa everything could be repaired. in mocimboa i could have a shower and relax. the road was nice and the villagers along the way stopped to stare or shout portuguese things at me from their work, men riding bikes loaded with sticks and woman carrying water on their heads. these are the main two things for people to do in the day. it looks to be a good enough life, they always have a smile on and they never seem to be bored or tired. in mocimboa i went to visit Guy's boss, Jeremy. Jeremy in in charge of keeping the oilmen comfortable in their big air conditioned, razor wire fenced strange office building. he agreed to help me with the bike as i pulled in. three of the oilmen stopped to see what i was about as they passed through the gate where i was parked. friendly men, two geologists and a translator, one of the men lives in calgary and i mentioned highpine and he invited me to lunch, which was a buffet and i ate more of it than the whole rest of the bunch. a whole company of oilmen, a few of them from calgary, mostly south africans. artumas, the name of the company. they all had dreams of roads and adventure and excitement and now they were in the north of mozambique and i was passing through and they liked me very much for it. i stayed the night, i had a dinner and a breakfast, and with my bike repaired by their welder i headed south full of eggs and crepes and coffee and stories and beaming happiness and excitement.

it took six hundred kilometers on bad road to drive from mocimboa to pemba because of a few wrong turns and heavy forests and bad directions and other things. being lost in this country is a bad feeling because there are very few people about, there would not be much to do if you became very lost here. being completely lost and alone and in danger is one of the most rare and strange feelings, when you are found again the memory of the loneliness and danger turn into pure gold. the tiny paved road rolled with the hills through green countryside, low trees and low grass and far horizons and many little green villages where if you stop you meet the entire population as they quickly gather in a crescent moon, from shortest to tallest from back to front, and the one man who knows some english comes forward to ask your name, and then all fifty of them begin to try to pronounce it without rolling the R, but they roll it. you ask them their names and all at once they begin chanting louder and louder their own name and it comes out as a low wild mash of noise, and you wave and drive on. i ran out of money one hundred kilometers from pemba, where there is a place to sleep, i ran out of gasoline as well. i had enough money in meticas for three liters but they all agreed i would need at least four litres to make pemba. as the problem was worked out, slowly the towns population of ragged twenty year old's and yellow eyed men made a complete circle around me and the man with the plastic jug of gasoline. i produced four american dollars and offered them for the fourth litre, and after some time and the help of an old man who knew something about american dollars, the deal was made.

i hoped for pemba and listened to the gurgle of gas in the tank and the sun began to set as pemba began, portuguese streets and people everywhere flying about in broken down trucks and laughing and drinking rhino wine from plastic bottles. in the middle of town on a sand path people went about walking and chatting and i lost control in the deep pit of dirt and my motorcycle crashed over on top of me to the shouts and laughing of the city. the throttle dug into the sand and kept full power to the back wheel and open chain, which spun above my trapped leg like a saw. i wiggled free and lifted the bike out and picked up the broken off pieces and rode on. sometimes when you see a thing happen the suprise of it is enough to cause a laugh even if it is a serious thing that you see, and in that light i forgive them for laughing. my right hand pinky finger is broken but it is fine.

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