Mozambique here we come!

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Warning: This story deserves a real story teller. One of those people with a gift for painting pictures in your mind and bringing every site, smell and sound off of the paper into your heart. I am not such a story teller but I must at least try to give you a sense of this day -- this day that we made the move from South Africa into Mozambique.

It started innocently enough. Optimistically, even. A glorious, clear sunny morning. Great anticipation. Portuguese phrase book in hand, I bounded out of our cozy tented home early, eager to start our new adventure.

The manager of our hostel in Nelspruit -- the lovely, lanky, ever-smiling Nitto, source of all information essential and esoteric, always delivered in a slow, lilting way -- had arranged for us to travel to Maputo with a friend of his who does special trips in his minibus. Five of us all together, three Argentines wrapped in long sleeves and wool sweaters and down coats and scarves, and us.

From Nelspruit to the South Africa border is a matter of an hour and a half. Short, easy, direct. Except on the morning of the first Saturday of South African school holidays. We hadn't counted on the eternal queue of SUVs with rosy South African families towing quad bikes, jetskies and huge motor boats. We also didn't count on the the Mozambican border guards being in a particularly cautious mood.

The serpentine line included a merry mix of cars, cargo trucks, motor homes, mechanized adventure equipment, chubby sunburned Afrikaners, minibus taxis packed to the gills with tangles of black faces and arms and shoulders and knees, and trailers and rickety carts packed impossibly high with bags and buckets, sacks of oranges, and even a dresser strapped to the side. If you moved just one of those precariously placed pieces of people's lives, or perhaps plucked just one juicy orange from the dangling sack, the whole load would come tumbling down.

Perhaps it was the easing into afternoon, or the stagnation, or the billows of exhaust from the cargo trucks, but it was getting hot. Layer after layer came off the Argentines until they finally had to flee the inside of the baking bus. We too got out to walk way up in the mile-long line to see what progress we could witness. We even resorted to counting how many vehicles stood before us. And then divided by how many the guards were letting through each time the spirit happened to move them. And the answer of exactly how long it was going to take us: A depressingly long time.

Everyone waiting entertained themselves in different ways. A few drivers read. A lot of passengers wandered. A gaggle of white teenagers tossed around a football. We inspected cargo on the dozens of trucks and wondered why anyone would be waiting on the other side for a 38-wheeler flatbed stacked with PVC tubing cut into 3-inch wide bands.

Three and a half hours, two apples, three bananas and some spicy corn nuts later, we were finally flagged through. We couldn't resist a sense of triumph. We had no idea how premature this was.

The first step is to stand in line on the South African side so they can register your departure with a stamp. The second step is to stand in a mob on the Mozambican side to register your entry with a stamp (and a fee).

Our driver was a mere 22 year old who must have been subbing for the guy who normally made this run. It was becoming incresingly clear thaht he had no idea what he was doing. It took two tries with the South African officials and three tries with the Mozambicans to produce an acceptable set of documents for the van. Somehow he made a case for the owner's manual being proof of vehicle registration. Who knows. But it worked to produce the narrow, tissue-paper thin piece of paper that seemed to be our ticket out.

The actual border is a foreboding site. There are rows and rows of razor wire. I think we counted six rows of the stuff. And a very very tall fence. South Africa and Mozambique have recently loosened visa requirements between them, but South Africans still blame all employment woes and low wages on the endless flow of Mozambican labor to the country. (The Mozambicans, we have learned since being here, reciprocate by blaming all crime, drug activity and corporate take overs on the South Africans.)

If you look back after you cross the border -- if you peer out the window and crane you neck just so, and allow your eyes to focus past the six rows of razor wire to the billboard beyond -- you just make it out. Welcome to South Africa!

And the signs that welcome you to Mozambique? Bem Vindo was tucked back there somewhere. I am petty sure I saw it. But the first thing you really see is a towering billboard. Black and white. The only image is a miner's hat that looks like its been tossed aside by a tired miner after a long day. And the text reads, "Where is the miner? He didn't come back because of AIDS."
And so finally we are here. Over the hills we descend into dry bushland. It is surely how the South African side, a mere extension of this space interrupted by razor wire, would have looked had it not been for merciless irrigation and cultivation.

And shacks. Not even shanty towns. They are reed shacks, at first just here and there, and then in more organized clusters. I was so busy contemplating these precarious homes that I didn't even notice we were being pulled over by a cop.

"You have a beeeeeg problema." Something about our driver passing him on a narrow bridge. He was disheveled, his dirty blue cap barely hanging on to his monstrous head. His white shirt, hanging limp with persperation, could maybe be part of a uniform if one stretched the imagination really really far.

Despite his rather dazed look he was smart enough to take the keys right out of the ignition. And to make a big deal out of the missing registration papers. The driver's manual did not impress this guy.

He demanded two thousand million rands. Two thousand million rands! Poor guy didn't even get it. In Mozambique they work in millions. A million Meticais is only about $40. Any respectable amount of money comes in the millions. And he wanted to be respectable so we made it 2000 million of the currency that he knew we were coming from. But two thousand million rands is a lot. Something like 300 million dollars. I could not help it. I burst out laughing. Not the respect the guy was looking for.

We were stuck. I was ready to stand on principles. I tried to demand that he give us a written ticket for our offense, and I was ready to have him drag us down to the police station. But there was the matter of the documents for the vehicle and none of us was sure how bad the situation was.

And so we couldn't put our foot down all the way, but surely 2000 million rands were completely out of the question. He could tell we were resisting. He finally resorted to throwing his hands in the air and uttering the two words he knew in English. "How much?!"

"How much?" He was asking us how much to pay him for the infraction he was accusing us of.
So the Argentines and we negotiated between ourselves in Spanish, and decided to give the guy 120 rands which was about all we add on us.

Of course just minutes after we drove away from our law enforcement friend we thought of a dozen different ways we could have better handled the situation. Oh well. Live and learn.
By this time our poor driver was a pitiful site. Nervous and embarrassed beyond consolation. He clearly had never driven into Maputo which was creeping up on us faster than he liked. Did we know how to get to our hostel? He was asking us! Thank goodness our Lonely Planet has a decent map of the city.

Map reading, of course, requires street signs. Stupid of us to expect such a thing. So there we are, driver with his shoulder up around his ears, white knuckles peering out from under his black skin as he gripped the steering wheel for some comfort. Me with map in hand, and the three Argentines and Jonathon are on street name duty. Blocks would go by before anyone shouted anything out. We needed Vladimir Lenin which would be shortly after Karl Marx, and then we'd turn right on Mao Tse Tung which would be just after Ho Chi Min. (One of the more humorous parts of this city is that the American Cultural Center is on the corner of Mao Tse Tung and Kim Il Sung. When I commented on this to a USAID staff member he said, "That's nothing. In New Delhi, during the Vietnam War, they renamed the street that the American Embassy was on to Ho Chi Min.)

After several long minutes of negotiating insane traffic and swarms of people at every intersection with no idea of where we were, Jonathon figured out that the street names were posted on little placards on the sides of the buildings that faced the other way. That is, one could only catch a glimpse of the street name if carefully peering out the back window as we came through an intersection. This was logical, we decided, only if the signs had all been hung in a day when Mozambicans drove on the other side of the road.

This was a huge contrast to South Africa which is one of the best signed countries I have ever been in. Really. Even counting the US and Europe (and definitely counting Washington DC!) My favorite South African highway sign is probably ten feet tall. All white with a huge red spot in the middle. A bit like an upended Japanese flag. And the bottom the words "High Accident Zone" scream out at you. As if you aren't nervous enough that you are driving on the the wrong side of the damn road where every turn feels like a death wish into the wrong lane. Its not enough that the minibus taxis are playing chicken, speeding right at you in your own lane. This, my friends and fellow drivers, is a high accident zone and don't you forget it!

Anyway, so there we were. Driver with tense shoulders, furrowed brow and clenched hands. The three Argentines shouting out the few letters they managed to see of each street sign. Me cross-referencing their letters against the names of streets on my guide book. And Jonathon with his binoculars. Really the binoculars saved us. Jonathon could finally read a few street signs from his perch at the rear window, which was just enough to get us in the game.

We finally made it left on Vladimir Lenin and right on Mau Tse Tung and pulled up in front of our hostel. The driver tumbled out of the car, absolutely wilted. He had managed, by the grace of God, a pair of binoculars and a little luck, to navigate us through the great divide. We had come less than 200 kilometers but had crossed worlds.

Before he turned to leave, the driver inched towards the guards at the hostel gate to ask for directions back to South Africa. There was no way he could retrace our crazy steps without his team of navigators. He tried English but the guards speak none of it. They tried Portuguese. No luck. Finally they found each other in Shangan -- a language connection that could not be broken even by colonial histories, six rows of razor wire, poor road signs, and corrupt officials. (stl)

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Photos

O Mineiro
Where is the miner? He didn't return home because of AIDS