City Mouse Goes Mato: Roadtripping in Northern Mozambique

Since I last wrote, I have visited five new Mozambican provinces and 1+ new countries (Peace Corps Volunteers are not allowed to travel to Zimbabwe, but we took pictures at the border!). It was an epic adventure that can’t be captured in a single blog post, so I will start with week 1, which took me from Chimoio, through the provinces of Zambezia, Nampula, Cabo Delgado and Niassa to the border of Malawi. Malawi and Tete will have to wait for the next post.

ROADTRIP

On Wednesday, July 17 I left Chimoio with my good friend Alexandra, who lives about four hours south in Dombe. Her parents and sister were flying into the northern city of Nampula and they had rented a car and driver to pick them up and drive them throughout the northern provinces and eventually back to Manica. We left at 3:00 in the morning to ensure we would reach Nampula before dark. The city has a reputation for unpleasant incidents and didn’t disappoint: further along in my journey someone reached in through a taxi window and tried to take my cell phone right from my hand at the bus station and Alexandra’s sister almost lost a necklace to a thief before even checking into their hotel room. 

Sunrise over Sofala; James, our intrepid driver (watch for his triumphant return in Malawi); Church in Mocuba, Zambezia.

Thankfully, our drive went smoothly and we arrived at the Peace Corps office in Nampula with plenty of light left. We ran into a fellow PCV who put us in touch with a Japanese JICA volunteer who was happy to put us up for the night. We passed out almost immediately and I was up at 4:00 the next morning to get to a chapa towards Angoche to visit Anneke, my much-missed neighbor/best friend from PST. 

I arrived at the beautiful beach town to a sky that promised rain and a friend who promised seafood. Despite the clouds, we had a wonderful visit, walking around the nearly empty “stone town” where she lives and works and catching up on life at site. Angoche was an important Muslim trading center in the 15^th century and rose again to importance during a surge of illegal slave trading in the late 19^th century because of its relative isolation. Since then, it has been all but abandoned as a port, currently housing a Chinese fleet of four fishing ships alongside the tiny local boats. Its unusual history left the city with a unique local language consisting of a mix of Swahili and Arabic, neither of which is spoken in other parts of Mozambique.

Skies over Angoche; Professora Anneke at her school.

After 20 short hours with Anneke, it was time to head back to Nampula to catch a bus to Montepuez, Cabo Delgado to meet up with another close friend from PST for the rest of my travels. Anneke had hired a friend to drive to the city as her mother was also arriving for a visit, but as is bound to happen to the best laid plans, we ended up in the back of an open-back truck after the posh SUV busted a strut on a particularly large pothole about 30 minutes outside Angoche. Despite the best luck one could hope for while traveling in Mozambique, I arrived at the Nampula bus terminal to find that the bus to Montepuez was not running that afternoon. The upside to this was having the afternoon free to run into a number of other PCVs passing through the city. I once again stayed with Takuya, the JICA volunteer Alexandra and I met on arriving in the north and once again found myself up and hitting the road at 2:30 the next morning.

Miraculously, I won an argument with a taxi driver who attempted to overcharge me for the early-morning ride to the bus stop (with the support of a crowd who accused him of attempting to take advantage of a foreigner: “I hope you are in her country one day and someone does the same to you!” said one mãe who had my back…) and after this, the ride to Cabo Delgado was smooth as could be on the rutted roads. I arrived to the smiling faces of Will, Kevin and Vikram and we enjoyed a leisurely lunch at Jardim, an outdoor restaurant with a brightly-colored airplane in the front yard. Kevin did some investigation and found out that the plane had crashed years before and been left. He also found out the cockpit had become a favorite place for locals to take care of their necessidades maiores. After lunch, Vikram continued east to Pemba and Kevin, Will and I hopped a chapa west to Balama to visit our friend Rafael. 

Kevin wanders during one of many near-breakdowns.

 After a few roadside stops that threw into doubt the chapa’s ability to cover the 60 or so kilometers to Balama, we arrived as the sun started setting. Rafael, who has adopted a number of “nieces and nephews” from the neighborhood kids, greeted us outside the school where he teaches, flanked by three neighbor crianças. We had decided to stay in Balama for Sunday, since I had been traveling every day since leaving Chimoio at 3:00 Wednesday morning. We knew a day with Raf and the kiddos would be relaxing, and it was. We spent the day exploring the market and then hiking out to a small mountain. We made a gang of new friends along the way who accompanied us up the mountain barefoot. Only one of the dozen-plus kids spoke any Portuguese, but holding the little girls hands and running barefoot down the dirt paths with them was just what I needed after months in the city.

When we got back, we ran into Rafael’s school director who offered to bring us dinner. As we waited for the food, some more neighborhood kids came over and helped us make a batch of peanut butter to take along on the road. While Will and I continued west, Rafael and Kevin would be leaving for Pemba and then Ilha de Moçambique.

Atop the mountain; Balama's welcome committee; making peanut butter with the neighbors.

 Will and I woke up Monday morning refreshed and ready to tackle the rough road into Niassa, the province with the reputation as the hardest in which to travel. We had chosen an unpaved road that can only be traveled during the dry season and was supposed to pass through some beautifully undeveloped parts of the country. We discovered that there was a chapa running from Balama to Marrupa, the city in Niassa that was our goal for our first day of travel. However, it seemed we would be the only people on it, and after seeing the condition of the chapa that we took the day before, it seemed safer to find a ride with a private vehicle if we could.

Hitting the road

We were up as the sun was rising and it took about 15 minutes of walking down the broad, red-dirt road before we already felt we were in the middle of nowhere. There was some foot traffic: women walking out to cut capim (grass) for their roofs, others carrying baskets to the next village, but the only other activity was wind blowing through the trees and birds flying overhead. We walked awhile, taking in the gorgeous landscape and looking for a nice shady spot to eat our breakfast of bread, bananas and homemade peanut butter. We found our spot a few kilometers outside of town and enjoyed our matabicho al fresco. 

Shortly after finishing, we heard the rumble of motors around the corner and hopped up to see two huge flatbed trucks coming down the road. We flagged them down and realized they were Chinese construction vehicles carrying concrete parts into Niassa, where the other end of the road was being paved. One of the drivers spoke enough Portuguese that we were able to negotiate a spot in the cabin of one the trucks and settled in for a day of bumping along at 20 kilometers per hour. Our chain-smoking driver spoke no Portuguese, giving us plenty of time to chat.

The view of the lead truck from ours.

The road quickly narrowed to a point where I don’t know what would have happened if another vehicle had come along in the other direction. It also changed from the bright red-orange clay soil of Balama into sand, further slowing our progress. Small villages dotted the roadside, but we eventually reached a wooded area that seemed completely uninhabited. 

The "road."

Perfect place for a flat tire. Along with the Chinese the drivers, each truck was manned by a Mozambican sitting atop the cargo on the flatbed, ensuring that nothing slipped off. Both trucks came to a stop and the Mozambicans got to work jacking up the truck that had a flat. It was quite a show to watch the four work together to get the old tire off and the spare mounted, as the Mozambicans spoke no Chinese and the Chinese spoke little-to-no Portuguese.

Scenes from the site of a flat tire: roadside flower; international cooperation; Where are we?

The new tire was eventually on, the tools were stowed, the Mozambicans returned to their perches monitoring their pieces of the future of transportation in Mozambique and we continued on our way. Once we passed over the border into the province of Niassa, although the road continued to be just as rutted and bumpy, we began following alongside an immaculately surfaced new dirt road, clearly just waiting to be paved. At around 3:00 in the afternoon, we came to a larger town and the trucks pulled into a lot on the far side. The driver explained they weren’t actually going to Marrupa, as they had told us, but would be stopping here, about 35 k outside the city. He assured us that it would be easy to find a ride the rest of the way. We thanked him and started off down the road. 

Leaving Cabo Delgado; what will eventually be a beautifully paved road.

I was a little nervous, as it was getting late, it was Ramadan, and all the vehicles we were seeing seemed to be going back and forth to the lot in which we had just been dropped. After walking about 40 minutes, accompanied by a friendly local boy who was on his way to buy cassava to break the fast that night, we stopped to eat another peanut butter sandwich. Before we had finished our snack, a shiny new SUV pulled up, almost but not quite full of Chinese engineers. They squeezed us into the backseat and took us about 25 of the remaining 30 kilometers to Marrupa. The Chinese building the road there had a whole camp to themselves, practically on the grounds of the airport on the outskirts of the city. We caught a ride in the back of an Electricidade de Moçambique truck the remaining distance and were dropped off directly in front of what turned out to be an adorable, cheap, clean pensão that immediately offered up hot water for a bath.

Will at the Marrupa airport; Marrupa's awesome church.

We wandered through the town a little, wishing we had arrived with a little more time to explore. It was a pretty town full of friendly people, with a nice market and delicious chicken. We talked to some people about the best way to get from there to Cuamba, Niassa’s second largest city and our next stop. We were repeatedly told that barely any private vehicles traveled that route and all that did left the city by 5:00 or 6:00 in the morning. There was one chapa that left at 3:00 am, but we decided to see what the traffic looked like at 5:00. Worst case, we would spend the day in Marrupa and take the chapa the next day. Even though this was the plan, as we walked past the chapa stop, we were talked into the front seat of an open-back truck that was about to leave. 

This woman was really excited to show her baby the muzungus; the road to Cuamba.

The car took its time, making repeated stops along the side of the road or in towns along the way, with the owner/driver having long phone conversations about his other businesses. We eventually got off at the Instituto de Formação de Profesores, where our friends and fellow PCVS Jay and Rich were living. The IFP was built in cooperation with the Japanese government and the houses were beautiful and full of sunlight. Unfortunately for Rich, who was teaching at the local secondary school, the IFP was also built about a 45-minute bike ride outside of the main city. After resting and having a cup of coffee, we walked into town for lunch and a trip to the market.

Despite being the second largest city in Niassa, as well as the terminal of train routes from both Nampula and Malawi, Cuamba does not have a single paved road. It has a large cotton mill, four markets, nice restaurants and not a single paved road. As it is currently the dry season, the city’s dirt roads filled the air with dust and grit. The PCVs living there – understandably – named the dust as the single worst part of living in Cuamba. Apparently, there are no plans to start paving there any time soon, either. Despite the dust, we had a nice time walking around and hearing about Rich’s work with a local farming coop trying to avoid bankruptcy. He and the Cuamba-based health PCV are currently applying for a loan for the organization in order to begin a project producing chicken feed from soybeans. We marveled at how easy it is as Peace Corps Volunteers to suddenly become the local expert on a subject (such as soybean processing) when the need arises.

A woman washes clothes in the river outside a cotton mill.

Cuamba was our last overnight before crossing into Malawi. We were up and out by moonlight, hoping to catch the first chapa to the border town of Mandimba. We would meet our friend Matt there, who was joining us for the couple days on Lake Malawi. He had been in Mandimba for a REDES conference and was staying with Mary Kate, an all around awesome person who goes down in my houseguest hall of fame for not just hanging a mosquito net in my spare room, but arriving with a friend visiting from the US who brought me a whole bottle of maple syrup. We hoped to arrive with enough time to hang out with Mary Kate and grab lunch. Unfortunately, she was called into work to receive the governor’s wife, who was doing rounds in preparation for a visit from Mozambique’s first lady. We did get about 10 minutes to visit before we had to move on in order to reach our lakeside destination before dark. Those ten minutes were filled with the most delicious samosas I have ever tasted, made hot and fresh by a friend of Mary Kate’s.

Moonlight over Cuamba; Will and Matt looking stylish; Mary Kate and her puppy.

We headed out to change our money into Malawian Kwachas (350 to 1 on the dollar) and take bike taxis to the border. And this is where I will leave the story for now. Malawi was an interesting enough experience to warrant its own post.

TO BE CONTINUED…