Tripppin' on a flux capacitor

This past weekend I saddled up my pony and moseyed down yonder to Mozambique for some fun in the sun. The picture to the left is the main reason I decided to fork over the greenbacks for the trip. Too much time in the office makes Michael go crazy.

I flew to Johannesburg, South Africa where I met up with my friend Jessica, the Robin to my Batman on this trip as she prefers to be called. The plan was to rent a car and travel overland to Maputo, the capitol of Mozambique to meet up with our friend Christina. It gave me an opportunity to try driving on the other side of the road, while steering from the other side of the car. After dodging a few pedestrians in the parking lot and looking the wrong way a few times to turn, we finally headed out on the road to Maputo. Well, to be exact, we camped in Pretoria for the night and then strolled down the road.

I eventually became comfortable with the driving, but I never quite became acclimated to the scenery. In fact, it was the first time that I really experienced some bit of culture shock since arriving in Africa. My guide book informed me that the small district in South Africa which houses both Pretoria and Johannesburg accounts for 10% of the wealth of the entire continent of Africa. It basically looks like any part of the US with well-kept towns and four-lane highways filled with millions of modern cars and hardly any signs of poverty. This is in stark contrast to the one-lane country roads of Malawi filled with mule-driven carts and ratted old buses plugging across a landscape dotted with tiny villages of mud huts.

Towards the end of the trip I realized why going to Malawi hadn’t bothered me as much as leaving it did. I think in my mind I had prepared myself for Africa to be as poor as I could imagine. I was prepared for people to be living out in the bush with no permanent housing and completely cut off from the world. I knew this wasn’t the case, but, maybe as a defense mechanism, it’s how I prepared myself. So every time I saw something modern like a road with no potholes or power lines, or a fine Indian or Italian restaurant I became more and more impressed by Malawi’s development. But when I arrived in South Africa it was like jumping ahead five decades. In fact, that’s a pretty good comparison for Malawi. It reminds me of what the US might have been like back in the 40’s and 50’s when the US was still a mostly rural society, at peace, and just starting to stumble upon some economic progress. It was probably what Doc Brown and Marty felt like when they hopped out of the Delorian.

Maybe that’s why people in the circumstances I find in Malawi seem so content. They really don’t know what they’re missing. They’re happy to see a new hotel being built, or, more locally, to see a road that can bring commerce to their little villages. They’re happy to have a bike when most people are still forced to walk. I hate to say ignorance is bliss, because I don’t like the word ignorance there. But I feel like if they were exposed to such development things would be a lot worse. This is why there’s so much conflict in places where there’s such severe inequality.

The trail to Maputo carried us into the small kingdom of Swaziland. Swaziland is its own country, completely surrounded by South Africa and Mozambique, and one of the last true kingdoms in the world. It was a fascinating little country, very clean and seemed to be as developed as South Africa. It actually may have been one of the favorite places I have ever been. The landscape was beautiful and it was filled with modern amenities. It was almost impossible to remember that Swaziland has the highest rate of HIV/AIDS in the world – almost 40% of the population is infected…two out of every 5 people. In the early nineties the rate was only 3%. Jessica and I stopped at an incredibly beautiful little restaurant overlooking a garden, followed by fields of sugar stalks all set in front of distant mountains. Apparently it’s a pretty popular spot since there was a plaque that informed me that “Jimmy Carter, President of the United States of America, Stood Here”. The curious part about the plaque is that it was in the urinal. And if you think I didn’t take a picture with that, then you’re crazy.

On we traveled, and by the time we reached Maputo it was already dark. Maputo is a large, dirty city that apparently has quite a crime problem. In fact, our car had not been parked outside Christina’s apartment for 30 minutes before we had a hubcap stolen. True story. We paid a teenager to watch the car for the rest of the night and luckily we didn’t lose anything else. We dined at a restaurant in Christina’s neighborhood where I tried a cut of meat I haven’t had a chance to try before (If you’re a vegetarian or Bambi-lover skip to the next paragraph). The special of the night was Gazelle served as a kebob. And it was delicious!!! It was easily one of the best cuts of meat I have ever tasted. If you’re ever at a restaurant in Maputo and gazelle’s on the menu I definitely recommend it.

The next morning we landed at a beach two hours north of Maputo and basically became vegetables for the next 24 hours eating whatever was available on the menus (which was about half the items actually listed on the menu) and drinking cold beverages. While lounging around I learned that I could communicate with the Portuguese speakers of Mozambique fairly well with my Spanish. More proof that I could probably learn Italian or Portuguese in about a week. I also spent the whole weekend waiting in vain for the chocolate cake at the restaurant where we spent most of our time. It was mentioned in the guide book as one of the best desserts around. Those of you who know me know how much this excited me. Unfortunately they didn’t have it when we first got there. But they said it would be there in the morning. So we checked back in the morning after another beautiful sunrise (see picture below). No cake. Check back in the afternoon. But, alas, we were gone by then and I did not get my Mozambican chocolate cake. (But those of you who know me, also could bet that when I made it back to Malawi I made a chocolate cake that is delicious.)

This reminds me of a book I’m reading. The author talks about time in Africa and how different it is from time in the West. For instance, if you see a bus and ask an African “When is this bus leaving?” you’ll likely get a strange look. That’s because, to them, the ‘bus’ does not exist yet. It only exists (and leaves) when there are people on it. Without people, there is no bus, and when there are people the ‘bus’ exists and it leaves. It’s just a different way of interpreting time. So, unfortunately for me, the ‘chocolate cake’ did not exist this weekend, and by the time it came into being I was already gone.

Unfortunately the beach could not be home for long enough and Jessica and I were forced to return to our normal lives. On the way back to South Africa we took a more direct route that bypassed Swaziland. Unfortunately it was also the more traveled stretch of road because everyone is trying to get into South Africa, which meant that the line leaving Mozambique and the next one for entering South Africa each stretched about 75 meters which probably would have taken a total of four hours to get through. Luckily a guy came up to us before we could even get out of our car and said that he could cut in line for us to get our passports stamped for a small fee. Once we figured out what he was talking about we readily agreed and got through each border post in about 10 minutes. It turns out that the guys we talked to bribes the guard at the door and the agent inside to get our passports stamped early. I don’t know why they didn’t put that in my Lonely Planet guide book. Best piece of advice I could give somebody crossing the border from Mozambique to South Africa.

After some more driving through the extensive bush of South Africa (and a few extra turns along the way J) we made it back for the night and I was back on a flight to the 1950’s the next morning. The crazy part is that on the way back I realized how much I had missed Malawi while I was gone. It doesn’t have all the luxuries and amenities of South Africa and Maputo, but it’s becoming my own little corner of Africa. The trip was a nice break and a chance to catch up with friends, but in the end it made me glad that I chose Malawi for my first experience in Africa. Or maybe it chose me. Hard to say.