I love traveling.
I always have.
I enjoy meeting new people and exploring new places. I can't exactly describe what I expected but I always thought traveling to a new and distant land would look . . . different. Maybe I expected Moses to meet me with the 10 Commandments when I landed in Egypt, or the Gong to sound when I landed in China. Maybe I expected more ethnic clothing and tribal dances, or maybe I just expected each country to still look the way I imagined it to look 200, 500 or 1000 years ago, during the time period in which I studied it in school. I've been to more than 15 countries over several continents and every new place leaves me with the same conclusion, a city is a city is a city. In many ways the city of Philadelphia looks like the city of Jerusalem which looks like the city of Manila which looks like the city of Lima. They all have people, cars, busses, trains, apartments, schools, grocery stores, dirt and parks. They all have wealth and they all have poverty. I was really disappointed when I first came to this realization but I have accepted it and now challenge myself to observe as many cultural differences as possible, which undoubtedly can be a lot of fun.
With this in mind I was really excited to travel to Mozambique this month. I always figured Africa held the most potential for me to experience something far different from what I was used to, for Africa has "the bush." How cool would it be to visit the bush, to see the people living off the land, to learn how they carry everything from wood to chickens and eggs on their heads, to figure out how the babies seem to hang on their mama's backs so effortlessly, to take in all the patterns and colors of their native clothes, to step inside the grass huts they live in and watch them draw water from a distant well. I was excited at the possibility of experiencing something truly different from anything I've seen before, to take what I thought might be similar to a step back in time. So, with baited breath I crossed the border from South Africa into Mozambique, through Maputo, the Capitol city, and into Macaia.
As our bus came to a stop the hot wind blew dust and trash across the partially black topped road. As I began to take stock of my surroundings I heard a rooster crow, saw a woman carrying a bundle of wood on top of her head and another with a jug of water on hers. To the right and left of me were concrete kiosks and as I tried to assess their purpose a bus drove by and distracted me. Actually it wasn't the bus that distracted me so much as the goat that was tied to the top of it. Just then our contact, Antonio, pulled up in a tiny little Toyota pick up truck. The 7 of us loaded the bed of the truck with our 40 pound packs, slightly smaller day packs, and a couple of bags of food, then we all jumped on top and set out to find our new home.
We pulled off the broken macadam onto a sandy dirt road, passed some grass huts, a few evacuated buildings and onto our base. We weren't in Kansas anymore, that's for sure. Merry Christmas! We're in the bush of Africa. Haha! I couldn't have been more excited. I got my Christmas wish. The only thing that would have made it any better was if my sister showed up in the middle of the bush, and I had no expectations of that happening. However, the cockroaches, lizards, bats and other assorted critters did come out to welcome us as we moved into our new home. There were actually bunk beds there for us to use but we had to set up our tents to keep out the mosquitoes so the beds were of no use to us . . . Merry Christmas . . . It seems as if my time in Mozambique was riddled with little ironies like that.
One afternoon I was trying desperately to catch a moment of time alone to jot down some thoughts. Solitude was difficult to find but I managed to locate a shady spot on the corner of the porch. Ahh, I melted into a chair, took in a deep breath and smiled with a sigh of contentment – Merry Christmas . . . I opened my computer to script a letter when a local man stopped by for a chat. His English was surprisingly good but I think he had a bit too much to drink before our conversation began. When I told him I was writing a letter to my sister he said, "Oh, why don't you write a letter to me?" "I don't even know you, what kind of letter would I write?" "Just a few letters like "L" "O" "V" "E" "R" would be good." "Um, I have to go . . ." Eeeek! So much for solitude . . . Merry Christmas . . .
Another night we walked out into the darkness after dinner and looked up in awe of the night sky. It was truly beautiful, a black sky sprinkled with twinkling white lights – Merry Christmas! We ran inside, scrambled around by the light of our headlamps and found a rain fly to take outside (cause that's what you have on the World Race. If you do have a blanket you surely don't want to get it dirty). All 7 of us piled on top and spent more than an hour gazing up at the stars. It took a minute to adjust but eventually we were able to see through the clouds of misquotes and bats to see Taurus the Bull, the Seven Sisters, Orion and his belt, Canis Major, a couple of satellites, and a few shooting stars. After about an hour Antonio came out and asked if we were OK. "Oh yeah, we're just enjoying the stars. Do you want to join us?" "No." he said, "It's not safe out here." "Oops. . . Merry Christmas . . . It's amazing how safe you can feel when 1. You are oblivious and 2. You are staring up at the same stars you enjoy from the safety of your own home in America.
Feeling quite full of the Christmas spirit I wanted to do something kind for Antonio and his family, something unexpected. We had the morning off and I decided I was going to weed the overgrown gardens around the compound. With the sun at my back I got to work yanking out the incredulous foliage. Just as I stood back to admire what I'd accomplished Antonio came outside. "What are you doing?" he asked. "Just pulling up the weeds." "Oh, why are you doing that?" "So it looks pretty (Yup, that's what I said)." "Oh, well, we planted those." Of course you did. You PLANTED crab grass. Ugh! I felt like a heel. . . Merry Christmas . . . You know what happened next, don't you? Yup. I replanted the beds I dug up and I made two new ones along the house. There were still extra weeds leftover – that is what they are, you know. WEEDS – so I made a Christmas wreath, tied little red bows on it and hung it around our mirror. Merry Christmas!
One of my favorite nights was when we all huddled together on the rain fly, outside our tents, set a computer up on an old mangled chair and watched National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. It can be difficult to get into the Christmas spirit when it's 100 degrees and there's no radio station playing non-stop Christmas tunes, no PEANUTS Christmas special on TV, and no Starbucks serving mint hot cocoa and white chocolate mochas. But watching Chevy Chase yank up a Christmas tree by the roots, lock himself in the attic, and go ballistic on the family sure helps the spirit come alive. It made me chuckle to think to myself,"I am sitting in the middle of the African bush, watching National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation while the bats are fluttering, mosquitoes are swarming, and cockroaches are crawling over my feet. This will probably never happen again – Merry Christmas!"
For reasons not worth explaining here, we had to leave our bush home after a week and a half, so we packed up all of our things and loaded them back into the tiny Toyota. We flagged down a bus to Maputo and got on. We had a three hour bus ride with no AC or open windows to our destination, We unloaded and waited. When our new contacts arrived we all looked at each other in bewilderment – They had a mini van. How were we supposed to get 7 people, 7 packs, each the size of another person, and 7 small backpacks in space made for 8 people? As we started moving bags around I think my top half was moving more quickly than my bottom half and I fell backwards overtop of the bags still on the ground – Merry Christmas! It was pretty funny, I have to admit. It was one of those times I wish someone were running a video camera. I would have liked to see what it looked like, but not quite as much as I would have liked to catch this next story on video though.
Arriving at our new place was overwhelming to say the least, maybe even oppressive. Every inch of floor space seemed to be taken up by beds and bodies already, and now we had to fit 7 more of us in. We squished and squirmed and made it work but the base looks like Aladdin's marketplace with sleeping mats, tents, back packs, clothes, and mosquito nets strewn everywhere. We were greeted with "Welcome! You need to be up at 5:30am to hoe the garden." Ugh. OK . . . Merry Christmas . . . It was hot and sweaty and very dirty. By the end of the day I was ready for a cold shower (good thing, cause that's all you get) and some time alone. I decided to climb up into a hammock and chill. The only problem was the hammock was about 5 feet off the ground and I am only 5'6", so . . . . Following the directions of a friend I stood under the hammock with my arms stretched out straight behind me. Then I wrapped my arms in the sides of the hammock and with my back to the fabric I jumped, making an effort to grab the hammock with my legs . . . I know . . . but remember, I was following directions. It didn't work. "Try one leg at a time," she said. Surprisingly it work. My body was wrapped up in the hammock, but I was still on the wrong side, looking at the ground. "Now twist yourself around," she said. And that's when it happened. Africa's Funniest Home Videos. My shoulder slipped out of the fabric and as I tried desperately to get it back in my body involuntarily did a somersault and I hit the ground with a very hard thud. Ouch! . . . Merry Christmas . . . that hurt, but imagining what it looked like sent me into a laughing fit on the ground. Once I could feel my back side again, I got up and made another attempt. Apparently I was supposed to put my arms forward, not behind me, and that made all the difference. I stayed up there for quite a while before I even made an attempt at getting down.
I've only been in Mozambique for two weeks and I could continue with stories like this for a few more paragraphs but I think I'll stop here. This is the first Christmas I've ever spent away from my family so in order to stay sane and not melt into depression I have been trying to focus on the little things that bring me joy. And even though there may be a sarcastic undertone to this blog, I am very thankful for each little silly or ironic thing that happens. If I am able to smile or laugh through it, it's totally worth it and truly a gift to my soul. I hope you too are able to look around and enjoy the little things this Holiday season.
Merry Christmas!
