Year 2 - Week 49: You Can't Spell "Accosted" Without C-O-S

And here it is: the last full week in Mozambique. Wow. I’d think by now that I’d start feeling something – anything – about leaving, but right now, I’m largely unemotional. I guess, for the most part, I’m just trying to soak it all in.

On the top of the list of things to soak in is this glorious summer weather. I’ll be walking into late autumn weather and hopefully it won’t be too chilly when I get home. For now, though, I wanted to get as much sun as ocean as possible. I perched myself in a chair with my book, looking out to a long, empty beach and a beautiful blue ocean, and read for the better part of the morning.

Around 11:45, I walked down to the market in search of food. I had made arrangements to go on an ocean safari in the afternoon. I figured it would be best to have at least a little food in me before heading out onto the water. I waited forty-five minutes for my food to come out, which meant I only had fifteen minutes to eat my food and get up to the dive shop.

An ocean safari is exactly what its sounds like: a safari on the ocean. Instead of going out to look for lions or elephants or zebras, like you would on a land safari, we went out looking for big ocean animals – manta rays, humpback whales, dolphins and whale sharks.

I knew moments after we hit the water that whatever lunch went down would come up very quickly. The water was choppy – not good for looking for whale sharks, not good for my stomach. Early on the trip, we came across a group of dolphins. We were able to swim with them for a bit before they scurried away.

Things went pretty poorly from there. We spend a lot of time on the boat looking for whale sharks, but they weren’t out to play tonight. Like any safari, sometimes you see a lot, sometimes you see a little. Today, we saw very little. All that time on the water did me in. With twenty minutes to go on the trip, I was leaning over the edge, saying goodbye to my chicken and rice lunch.

There was one little piece of excitement before we hit the shore. A drunk Mozambican man was swept out to sea by the heavy surf. Our boat ended up making a fairly historic rescue of this man, who clearly couldn’t sleep very well.

As usual, I immediately felt better when we hit the land. I made my way back to the hostel to grab some money for a market run. I bought some pretty normal provisions – pasta and all the ingredients for tomato sauce. When I returned, though, I was met by my new buddy Sergey. He wanted to go on the hunt for seafood, and since I didn’t have anything better to do, I decided to go with him. We ended up buying some shrimp and four good sized crawfish.

While we cooked our food, we were joined by five other people. Four of them were from Israel, recently released from their military duties, and the last person was an Argentine reporter. Along with me and Sergey, a Ukranian-born American citizen, we soon realized that we all had one thing in common: we’re all Jewish. Funny how we tend to find each other.

We were eventually joined by one other person, a woman from Canada. I fell in love with her the moment she said “I’m a flight attendant for Toronto Maple Leafs charter flights.” We spent a good portion of the night talking about her adventures with the team and her travels when she’s not working. The whole night was just more proof that when you are traveling, it’s not a matter of where you go or what you see, but who you meet.

I was on the road early Monday. It should have been an easy travel day: chapa to Inhambane, boat to Maxixe, car to Xai Xai. Of course, things are never that easy. I sat in Maxixe on the side of the road for hours, waiting for someone to pick me up, but no one was willing to pick up this muzungu.

Finally, I gave in. I had to get on something going south, so I jumped into a bus heading to Maputo. The ride was uneventful. I fell asleep for a good portion of it, but it wasn’t enough rest.

The travel day was way too long. I eventually arrived at my host’s house, tired and starving. His empregada had already cooked beans, some of the best beans I’ve had in this country. We each ate a plate of rice and beans and I went to bed shortly after, at the pathetic hour of 7:15.

Hopeful that I wouldn’t have another disastrous travel day, I got out to the side of the road early. I was promptly passed by a car full of white people, which is always frustrating. But then, something very strange happened: they turned around. It turns out that the car wasn’t full of South Africans, like I had suspected, but with Peace Corps Volunteers heading to Maputo. Woo! That made my morning much better.

The rest of the afternoon for me was all very quiet. I lounged around the Peace Corps office, watching satellite television, browsing around the internet, being largely unproductive. I later made my way to my hotel to drop off my bags.

Around 7 o’clock, I was joined by my good friend Kate. We were making our way toward a restaurant when a man about our age starting walking behind us, babbling some bullshit. I immediately got suspicious and we decided it would be best to let him pass. At this point, the man went in front of us, picked up a rock, grabbed my shirt and tried to attack me. Clearly, he was drunk and slow, and I was able to grab the rock right out of his hand.

I carried the rock with me for the rest of the night, all the way to the restaurant. We had some delicious Indian and Chinese food, then returned home by taxi. I’m a firm believer that lightning doesn’t strike twice, but there’s no sense in testing that theory now.

Wednesday was the first day of many that, in theory, I’d be doing stuff. In reality, this is probably going to be a long, boring process that will be drawn out by bureaucracy and disorganization. The fun began with a lovely little trip to Namaacha. This was a purely business trip – visa renewal.


The day started off beautifully. The person responsible for helping us with our visas ran into the Volunteer lounge with a big smile and his face and proceeded to make it rain, spraying money all over the lounge. That was the best part of our day.

What should have probably taken an hour took the entire day. I would have liked to have been back by noon, grab some lunch, then close my bank account. Of course, not of that would be possible, because we were stuck in the tangle that is Mozambican visa renewal until 3 PM.

There was no way that I could do anything in my remaining hour or two in Maputo. The bank conveniently closed at 3 o’clock, so I sat around the Peace Corps office, doing nothing in particular.

After last night’s attempted robbery, there was no way that I would be venturing very far for dinner. We went to Mundo’s, one of the closest restaurants to the hotel, and I ate some delicious pizza. If nothing else, this is going to be a week of eating delicious food. To top it off, we went out for ice cream afterward. We’ll see how my stomach handles all that lactose.

Thursday put me right into the black hole of Peace Corps/Mozambique red-tape-land. I was supposed to begin my medical check-up in the morning, but naturally that didn’t happen. I sat in the Peace Corps office for three hours before I decided to be productive.

Then, in a shocking turn of events, I got a lot of things done in the afternoon. I managed to close my bank account in less than two hours, then finished all of my medical nonsense, and finished up by taking my language test.

The night was just one crazy adventure. It started at a bar with Laurentina Preta on tap, which might be the greatest thing ever. Then we went right back to Mundo’s, where I had an obnoxiously good chicken sandwich. The night was topped off when a friend of ours decided to take us to a bar in Maputo’s Red Light district. The tequila shot didn’t make me black out, but the beer after it sure as hell did.

I woke up early Friday morning unsure if I was still drunk or hung over. I popped some rehydration fluids and a liter of water, and felt better for the most part. I finished up some medical stuff – a FECA video, a TB shot – and had brief interviews with my bosses. After doing all that, I am so achingly close to being done here. I’ll I need is to have my TB test read on Monday and I’m done.

For most of this week, I’ve been on the two-meal-a-day plan – breakfast and dinner. But today, the day after Moz 15 site placement, we wanted to meet the new Machanga people. One of them came down to Maputo. We ended up having lunch at Spicy Thai, talking about Machanga, and amazingly, our replacement bought our meal. He said it was the least he could do for all the stuff we’re leaving him. Sweet. Free lunch.

I went back to the Peace Corps office briefly before heading over to my “dentist appointment”. Here’s how much faith I have in my obligatory dentist appointment: I’ve scheduled a dentist appointment for the first available day I’m home. Richie and I both showed up late to our appointments, which was perfectly okay because, you know, we’re still in Mozambique.

We went on the hunt for food early in the evening. Tonight’s food was Middle Eastern – shwarma. We were joined by three other Volunteers and, naturally, we topped the night with ice cream.

Saturday was largely uneventful. In fact, it’s barely worth writing about. So I’m going to take care of it one paragraph. I sat at the Peace Corps office all morning being unproductive, then ate delicious fried food for lunch. I walked to the a significant-sized mall even though I didn’t need anything, just to burn the calories from lunch. I sat in the Peace Corps office for a lot of the afternoon, then ate chicken for dinner before passing out.

Really soaking in this last week in Maputo...