Well, I’m here and I’m happy. That’s a lie. I’m ecstatic. I love it here. Every five minutes Pricilla and I look at each other with big goofy smiles and say, “we’re in Africa!”
It was quite an ordeal to get here, however. Once we boarded our plane for Johannesburg it was delayed for six hours, and we couldn’t leave to plane. They didn’t give us food or drinks that whole time either. Every hour the pilot would give another excuse for why we were not taking off yet. Just when we were ready to leave a woman fainted from claustrophobia and emergency medics had to come and take her away on a gurney. But twenty hours later we landed in Johannesburg with only a few pee-in-your-pants moments of turbulence.
We were so excited to land and go meet our Brazilian friends who landed before us, but then Iliana was detained at passport control because she didn’t have a proper visa. Apparently Guatemala is one of the only countries that needs a visa to enter South Africa. We were running all over the airport to try and find a solution. This was at nearly 1 in the morning after being on a plane for 25 hours. Since half of us needed to catch a bus at 6 in the morning the next day we needed to leave to go to the hostel. Ben, Jogn-soh, and Jacoby ended up staying with her, since they had to catch planes the next day, and got her a plane ticket for the next morning to Maputo. It was really nerve wrecking. The rest of us got to the hostel at 2 and then woke up at 5 to catch the bus. It was an 8 hour bus ride but it wasn’t so bad.
The whole team stayed in Maputo for one day to sign contracts and adjust. When we went to buy groceries for lunch we just walked over to a machamba, small vegetable gardens that everyone grows here, and asked for some vegetables. The man walked over to the lettuce patch and pulled out a head of lettuce for us and some tomatoes. It doesn’t get any fresher than that. We rode on chappas into town. I read a lot about chappas in other people’s emails but I never really understood what they are really like. They are converted minivans that are the most common form of transportation. Whenever one comes by a sworm of thirty or forty people run after it. Then they all push to get into it. It’s so intimidating. We waited for over an hour to get our because we were to scared to fight in the crowd. There is no way you are going to believe this but there were 31 people in the chappa, the size of a minivan. I was squeezed between two guys armpits. People were sitting on the smashed out window sills with their butts hanging out and there were about four people in the trunk space. We rode like this for 45 minutes.
The next morning we caught another bus. This time we had to wake up 4 in the morning. We said our goodbyes to the rest of the team and Pricilla and I prepared ourselves for a nine-hour bus ride to Inhambane. It was quite an eye opener. It was sad to see how Mozambiqueans talk to each other.
The driver sold ticket to fill all the seats, but then right as we were about to leave he kicked off half of the locals that were on the bus. He said to them that they were just extra luggage and that foreigners pay more for their luggage to have a seat. There was a lot of yelling but eventually the locals left the bus and the driver gave them back their money. I didn’t understand why they were kicked off because half the bus was empty, but then we went and picked up about fifteen white people from a nearby hotel. Mind you there were twenty seats on the bus and thirty people with tickets. It was jam-packed and people were sitting on luggage in the aisle. We drove like this for four hours. When we stopped in a small town I thought we were going to drop off some people but the driver ended up picking up his family. The five of them brought on huge bags of rice and crops and sat on top of the huge pile of luggage.
The roads were so awful at one point that the driver drove on the side of the road because it was less bumpy. It took us an hour to drive twenty miles. When we got to Inhambane Flavia picked us up. I was so happy to see her. She took us to our house to see were we’d be living for the next year. It is a very cute, bright blue house across the street from the school. I have to share a bed with Flavia because they usually don’t have this many DIs here. We also live with Tamsin (from England) and Jerome (from France). We have no running water and no flushing toilets. But we do have electricity which I’m very happy about. There’s a well out side that we get our water from for our showers. We have to get the drinking water from about a half-mile away. The outhouse is hilarious. There are two cement foot shaped things that you stand on and then a tiny hole that you use. The smell isn’t too bad.
We were so exhausted after the bus ride and the tour that we fell asleep at 4 in the afternoon and slept until eight the next day. That is when we went to the school for the first day. One of the students showed us around, and it’s a pretty clean and modern compound. We talked with the directors about what our responsibilities would be. I’m going to start off teaching English, and in December I’m going to travel around Mozambique with the students for the investigation period. I was so glad when they said we could have the rest of the day off because I had such a headache from trying to understand the Portuguese.
When we got back to our house we decided to take the hour and a half long walk to the nearest town. When we got there we met these two guys from South Africa who were so nice. We told them it was our first day and they offered to show us around. We drove everywhere in a nice air-conditioned car. Then they took us to their hotel on the beach, and we got to swim. It is the nicest beach I have ever seen, and we were the only ones there. The water was the perfect temperature. They said they never saw two people so happy to be in the water. I love the Indian Ocean.
Then they took us out for dinner and told us all about the situation in South Africa. They are Africans (I’m not sure if that’s how you spell it) the descendent of the Dutch settlers in South Africa. They said that all of the white people are trying to leave South Africa because it’s impossible for Whites to get jobs there. A lot of them are moving to Mozambique, Australia, and the UK. They said the guy who will probably become the next president hates white people and wants revenge for the Apartheid, so they want to leave before, as they said, “shit hits the fan.” It was interesting hearing this perspective of South Africa because I usually only hear about how oppressive and racists the whites are there. At the same time we were talking to the local waiters and they were saying that they didn’t like all the white South Africans coming in and buying up the prettiest land, but that they can’t complain because Hotel owners offer a lot more jobs and they improve the roads and the water.
Next, they drove us to all of the hotels in the area to introduce us to the owners. When we told them we didn’t have running water they all said that we can come to the hotel whenever we need a hot shower. We got their numbers and they said to call anytime if we need help. It was so invaluable to make these contacts on the first day.
Afterwards we all laid out on the beach and watched the stars. I have never seen so many stars in my life. It was an incredible evening. We all agreed that it was a blessing to meet each other. The two guys then drove us home and made plans to meet up again. They are here purifying water, so we are going to try and get them to teach an evening course at our school about how to purify water.
Unfortunately we found out the next morning that we were in big trouble. We didn’t know that we had to ask permission to leave the school any time we go out. I’m realizing now that we really won’t have any personal time. We don’t have free weekends and we can’t go out at night. It’s going to be very hard to adjust to this lifestyle. I want to teach, but I also want to meet as many people as possible and have lots of different experiences. The director said that if I want to do that I should go home. Tamsin and Flavia told us that he pretends to be really mean at first because he wants to have control over everyone. I'm hoping it will get better. It’s hard to know that the easy life is so close by but I’m not allowed to enjoy it, but it’s a good lesson because that’s how it is for most of the world.
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