We’ve decided that the portal to enlightenment is bad roads and difficult travel. This is decided while the wooden beaches beneath us are slamming against our tailbones like a meat tenderizer to a flank steak and the dust in the air is worming its way into our every pore and fiber. We are in northeast Mozambique on what will be an eight-hour journey by road and sea to an island within the Quirimbas National Park.
It’s my first R&R break and I’m ecstatic to be in a new place, and one that is marked by beauty. One of the perks of this job is that every 10 weeks we get a nine-day paid break – complete with per diem and airline expenses. With me is Ryan, the field coordinator of our site in Yambio, where I was based for nearly three months before being relocated to the capital (Juba). Though I had never met Ryan until I landed in South Sudan, it seems we’ve been following one another around the globe. Like me, he spent his formative years in Minnesota before relocating to the Puget Sound area of Washington State, and eventually on to New Orleans in the post-Katrina mayhem. Like me, Ryan is a former Peace Corps volunteer. And like me, he’s keen on seeking new adventures and checking out as much of Africa as time and money allows. And so when he invited me to go to Mozambique with him, there was no hesitation.
We’ve spent a few peaceful days in the peninsula town of Pemba, lounging with the locals and the small backpacker contingency. Now the island of Ibo beckons. And so at 4:30 a.m. we rise to and join the small group of Mozambiqueans huddled beneath a tree to await the bus. As the sun begins to rise, an open-sided truck already holding people and cargo lurches to a halt near our tree. Fellow travelers begin amassing around it, jockeying for a position. Please don’t tell me this is our bus, I say to no one in particular. But there is no time to pause; people are already alighting and choosing a hips-width spot on the crudely hewn wooden bench that lines the perimeter of the truck bed. Luggage is strapped to the roof, bags of rice and sugar are laid on the floor and two chickens whose legs are tied together are shoved under the bench. This is really Africa, I think to myself as Ryan and I settle at the back end of the bed. We’re lucky in landing the best viewing position on the truck, I determine. With my feet perched atop a large cooler holding what smells to be fish, I count 17 people in the truck.
The town is quietly awakening as we pass through on smooth black-topped roads. The ocean, which we see from both sides of the road, is ebbing out on her morning stroll to the other side. The lush trees and tall grasses are gently bobbing in the breeze. It is so beautiful – and so different from the sweltering, pungent, garbage-ridden streets of Juba. But before we’ve even reached the town’s boundaries the truck is slowing to a stop. A gaggle of street vendors engulfs the trucks; outstretched arms bearing toothbrushes, pens and long yellow bars of laundry soap are thrust at us. Please don’t tell me we’re picking up more passengers, I mutter to Ryan, as hips shift and feet begin battling for foot space. The new passenger, and old man, is left to stand, hanging onto the roof; the money-taker is hanging from the ladder off the back end. We are now 22.
As we pass through villages of square homes crafted from mud and grass, trails of barefooted kids run behind the truck. “Mzungu, mzungu,” they yell excitedly, announcing to all that we are white as Ryan gives them the thumbs-up sign. But now that we have turned off the pavement onto a dirt road, reality announces itself. After only a few kilometers my black shirt is red-brown with finely ground earth. My sunglasses have become handy dust goggles and a cotton scarf a face mask. We soar up and slam down with each rut. My arm is sore from hanging on to the truck side. My back feels bruised. Four hours and one mechanical break-down later, I am done. We have two more hours ahead of us.
This transportation adventure is the height of those we’ve experienced this week. On our first day in Pemba we decided to take the town bus to nowhere in particular as a sort of cheap sight-seeing tour. Only four people were riding the clean, modern bus when we boarded near the old town section. Within 15 minutes we both had babies on our laps, grandmothers at our feet and armpits in our faces. The bus became so packed that, when we reached our stop, the only way we could manage to disembark was by crawling through the windows and jumping down to the road – a move that did not please the bus driver. A few days later we were hitching a ride on an 18-wheeler Coca-Cola delivery truck after pretending to be guests at Pemba’s five-star hotel (no one knew otherwise as we swam in the oceanside infinity pool and sipped drinks among taxi-dermied big game heads in the high-brow bar).
At hour six our bush taxi drops us in a town that albeit quaint, is nowhere near the ocean. We are afraid to even contemplate that we may have been on the wrong truck the entire time, limited as we by an inability to speak Portuguese. The driver, however, knows we need to get to the island. He points at a fellow passenger and indicates we should follow him. We walk for about 10 minutes across a land void at this moment of the sea and emerge in what appears to be someone’s yard. A handful of people are resting beneath a beautiful baobab tree, carved with the names of previous visitors, waiting for the small wooden boat for the island. After one hour and 15 minutes on the water – with one man bailing water from the boat’s bottom the entire time – we see the island on the horizon. The charm of this former Portuguese colony and its crumbling mosques, churches and homes awaits.
Indeed we do feel enlightened.
