The Chapa
If you ever find yourself under an overpass in a sketchy part of Maputo just outside of a bus depot, just make sure you are with a taxi driver who has no taxi. If this sounds remotely confusing, welcome to traveling in Mozambique.
Upon entering Mozambique, I knew that at the end of my 30-day visa, I would have to re-up for another 30 days by making a journey to the South African border from Tofo. I went online to find out the details only to find horror stories of the chaos, haggling and dishonest authorities awaiting me. Having crossed the Costa Rican and Panamanian border more times than I care to count, I figured it would likely be the same process. Stamp out, stamp in, stamp out, stamp in again.
I found in Mozambique that people would rather not tell the truth upfront if there is something they cannot deliver. For example, rather than explain that a certain vegetable is not available for a dish, an entirely new dish might appear that you never ordered. All of this is fine and well for food and other minor instances (it is pretty hard to complain when you are in a country where the vast majority of people go without food on a regular basis), but watching a small withholding of information unfold into an adventure I wish not to repeat was like witnessing the unraveling of a plot in an action-comedy movie.
First, let’s introduce the characters of this charade:
Van passenger 1: Topher- Independently wealthy computer scientist from the US who travels the world and works in conservation.
Van passenger 2: Priscilla- British and Italian Natural healer, yogi, practitioner of qi-gong, vibrates on a higher level.
Van passenger 3: David- South African college student on his way back to Joburg from visiting his grandparent’s farm in the middle of nowhere Mozambique.
Van passengers 4 and 5: Mom and small son- South Africans on their way home from Tofo who took up the entire back seat until they were forced to move by…
Van passenger 6: The quiet one- Non-descript male about 24 years old who said nothing the entire trip.
Van passengers 7 and 8: The smokers- An older woman who hacked her lungs out at every rest stop and someone next to her who also smoked profusely at each rest stop.
Driver: An Afrikaans man with a full round belly and very short stature who smiled a lot, but whom I could barely understand even when he was speaking English.
Van passenger 9: Me- Visiting black American volunteer staying in Tofo wondering how she was in a van in Mozambique filled with only white foreigners.
Now that you know who my travel companions were, it is important to let you know that all of this tom-foolery began at the crack of dawn. From Tofo, the company operating as Amigos and/or Zelma only provides service to Maputo and onward to South Africa two times per week, Tuesdays and Fridays departing at 4:15am. I arrived at 4:13am to find that everyone was already in the van and I was told that the van actually leaves at 4:00am from the out of breath driver who was busy snuffing out his cigarette. I sheepishly entered the van and apologized to my van companions who were gracious enough to tell me that they had all just arrived a few moments prior. I was happy to see Priscilla in the van who was also on her way to the border to renew her visa. I had taken a qi-gong class with her the week prior and we made a pact early on in the journey that we would do our border crossing together. This gave me some relief as up to this point, I had only been given information from the return taxi company that someone named “Admiro” would be picking us up at the border and returning us to Maputo while the other van passengers continued on to Johannesburg.
Sometime in the early morning, I managed to open my eyes to see the first light of the sunrise through the haze of dust as we trudged our way along the road. I tried to go back to sleep, but the music choice of the driver made me wonder what decade and country we were in. Have you ever listened to three straight hours of 1980s music sung in Afrikaans? It is not fun. Did you know that there is an entire genre of country music sung in Afrikaans? It is terrible. After trying to get comfortable multiple times, I finally gave up and decided that sleeping was just not going to be a viable option. I turned on my Kindle and started to read “Homegoing” that two of my friends in the states recommended I read. Not knowing that the book was about slavery, I only managed to get past the first few sections before I had to close it as I began to have vivid images of the terrors that people were subject to during that time. As I shut my Kindle, I couldn’t help but consider the immense legacy of colonialism and slavery as we drove past small towns where people were selling anything and everything they could for what amounted to just a few dollars. At each stop, we were approached by people selling oranges, bananas, cashews, clothing and yams. Of course, the reason there were no other black people in the van was because at $56 USD, the opportunity to ride in a private “luxury” van was absolutely out of economic reach to Mozambicans in the countryside. Additionally, I was the only black US traveler for miles and miles, again my economic standing allowing me the fortunate position to ride in a nice van to the border.
As the wheels kept turning, the music luckily shifted from country music in Afrikaans to 80s music covers and I suddenly felt alive again. As “Don’t you want me baby” began to play, my fellow passengers began to stir and we all dug into the various snacks we brought on board. Priscilla immediately went into a qi-gong practice complete with tapping followed by eating her bananas, nuts and cereals. I looked up to then find her with a stretch band around her foot that was peering up past the back of the seat wishing I too could fully stretch my legs. Of course, watching this was all quite comical because I had the pleasure of witnessing Topher, seated in front of me, steal glances of Priscilla’s qi-gong and stretching bus routine in wonder. Shortly after, Priscilla popped in her earbuds and danced in her seat to what appeared to be the best music on earth.
Following Priscilla’s tune, I put in my earbuds and proceeded to listen to Alanis Morissette whose music, for some reason, I had been re-fascinated with since I had arrived to Mozambique. Perhaps it is because when I was 20, Jagged Little Pill was all the rage and it was also a time when I traveled alone to Costa Rica to study abroad for the first time. The parallels between how I was feeling on my sabbatical and how I felt in Costa Rica could not go unnoticed. As Alanis belted out, “and as they plane crashed down…”, I thought, yes, Alanis, it is freaking ironic!
Somehow, through my earbuds, I suddenly heard a tinkering, the kind that can only be associated with sound of a video game. There it was again. The high-pitched doom noise that can only mean one thing; a child was playing a video game with the volume up and his mother was completely passed out in the back and oblivious to this most hair-raising and alarming to the senses noise. I turned around to find the five-year-old happily entranced in a game that involved collecting coins I imagined. My only option was to give him the stare of, “if you do not turn that down I will leap over this chair and make you turn it down.” He glanced up briefly and went back to his business. I returned to staring at the back of my chair trying to figure out other options for drowning out the noise. Ten seconds later, I turned around again and offered a raised eyebrow and another, “if you do not turn that down I will leap over this chair and make you turn it down.” Luckily, the boy moved a little which disturbed his mother who woke up and immediately grabbed the phone and turned down the volume. Hallelujah. No one messes with Alanis.
At this point we were about four hours into the drive and it was time to make a stop. The driver said something to the effect of, “Free toilets thaaa, pay toilets ovah thaaa. I wud use freee, yaaaah.” I naively wandered over to the free toilets which consisted of two holes in the ground. Luckily there were plastic treads to help stabilize yourself in the squat position. A true delight. Upon exiting, I saw the mother of the game addict who looked at me sideways and said, “you know that the pay bathrooms are only 10 meticais and they are proper toilets, yah?” Fantastic as I played Alanis in my head (“It’s like squatting over a squalid toilet, when you could have paid…”). By the way 10 meticais is equivalent to $0.16.
After the smokers finished their cigarettes and hacked all over the place, we all got back in the van to continue our journey to the border. With veins pulsing with fresh doses of caffeine, small conversations started here and there and filled the van with a low chatter. We stopped on the side of the road to pick up van passenger 6, “the quiet one”. He made his way to the back of the van and the five-year-old was now forced to move closer to his mother instead of remaining sprawled out on the back seat. The quiet one said nothing, the kid moved and the quiet one sat down. I looked back in amazement that he actually used zero words and wondered if he had some weird telepathic powers. Nope. He was just flipping rude.
I don’t really know what happened over the next four hours, but I wound up talking to Topher for quite a while about the fallacy of what I am now calling “volun-con-tourism”. He works for a major worldwide marine conservation organization and there I was, a volunteer with a different marine conservation organization operating out of the same town. I am going to avoid going into a full rant about the “con” in volun-con-tourism and save it for another blog post entirely; to be continued. David the college student chimed in about studying business, but how he wished he could do something more in the biological realm. I don’t understand why people feel the need to say this. “Wished?” Hopefully he didn’t go into biology because he wasn’t smart enough as opposed to just wanting to make money. I imagined David driving his fancy car in ten years oblivious to how his business practices were influencing the biological world. Okay, that’s not fair, but he might as well have said, “ha ha ha, suckers! I am going to actually make money.” Topher and I glanced at each other and continued our conversation on the conservation hoax.
Finally, after about nine hours, we made it to the Mozambique/South African border. We all hopped out of the van and were immediately ushered by our driver to a line pouring out from the entrance to immigration. The combination of heat, Topher’s incessant chattering and BO were overwhelming. I tried to find shade by standing behind a taller person in front of me, but it was of no use. We slowly inched our way to the door and after 30 minutes we made it to the entry way. Once we got to the proper line up barriers, the cattle herding began. “Passports!” yelled one authority, “Next!!” demanded another. I approached the window and smiled. The man took my passport which I had nicely opened to my old visa. He immediately lost the page, glanced at the front of my passport, looked up at me and smirked. A smirk? I had never received a smirk at a border before. What in the hell did that mean? I continued to smile. My van mates were already done with stamping out of Mozambique and on their way out. The man began to type various keys in what seemed like no particular order while I stood there wondering what was happening. After several more minutes he looked up, handed me my passport and proceeded to call the next person.
It’s a very funny feeling when you float between two countries. Officially stamped out of one, not yet officially on the books in the other, yet firmly with two feet on the ground in some strange limbo state. We got back into the van and drove a short distance to the South African immigration building. I approached the glass to find a woman with eyes of steel staring back at me. I attempted a smile and she refused to acknowledge me. She flipped through my passport and handed it back. For some reason I thought I needed a stamp (I later realized that I already had a 90 day South African stamp from when I entered JoBurg on my way to Moz), so I asked her if I was done. She mumbled something from behind the glass which I could not understand. I asked again if I was okay to leave. She again mumbled something from behind the glass. This time I pulled my ear toward the glass and said, “I am sorry, but I cannot hear you. Am I okay to leave?”. With a rage I have never felt from any government authority in any country, she replied, “TAKE YOUR PASSPORT!!” as she basically fumed fire from her nostrils and stared at me like I was a complete idiot. Any sense of sisterhood I had upon approaching the window was thrown out immediately. The driver who witnessed the entire encounter mumbled something and then told me to walk away as he said, “bettah to leave than deal with authorities, yaaaah”.
Afterward, Priscilla and I said goodbye to our van mates, collected our bags from the driver and made our way back to the Mozambican side. The sun continued to beat down on us as we walked up the hill from the South African immigration building on the Mozambican side. We were finally on our own. Two foreign women navigating the dreaded border.
The line to enter the building (the same building we stamped out of, just now on the other side) was very short and I immediately made my way to the first available government authority. Now very weary of smiling, I simply handed my passport over and said nothing. In less than one minute, my passport was handed back to me with a circular stamp that read, “28-6-19”. I stared at the stamp with a sinking feeling as the agent yelled, “next!” somewhat skeptical of the stamp. A few moments passed and I wandered over to a window where I asked a man in my best Portañol if the stamp I received was the correct stamp. He told me it was, and I proceeded to wait for Priscilla. I still felt a little strange about the stamp, so I inquired at the window where Priscilla was trying to finagle a 3-month visa (Moz usually only issues 30-day visas). The man was nice enough to look in my passport and he immediately asked me who gave me the stamp. My heart began to race as he stepped out of the booth and demanded that I point out the poor agent who I now knew made a serious error. Each agent looked at me with a look of terror from behind the glass as I glided down and finally had to point out the agent who gave me a stamp rather than a visa. Had I not received a visa, FYI, I would have had to pay 2,000 meticais per day of overstay which would have amounted to 60,000 meticais after 30 days (or about $967!). Apparently, the man thought I had a South African passport and simply gave me a stamp. Not sure how you overlook the country of origin when entering a country, but stranger things have happened at this border, I am certain.
After the visa debacle, I received a few phone calls from a man named, Miguel, who was actually supposed to be a man named Franco, who was actually supposed to be the infamous, “Admiro”, but whatever. This Miguel man started to bomb my phone and I eventually found him out in the parking lot. “Come with me when you are ready, I’ll be waiting by the Vodacom place,” he said as he sprinted into the ether of cars and people selling cashews. Priscilla finally appeared and though she was not able to get a three-month visa, she now had her 30-day visa and the realization that she would have to repeat this journey again. We were ready to roll back to Maputo. Side note- that morning I had told Priscilla that I had arranged transport to go to Maputo and that she would have a safe and reliable way of getting to Maputo if she joined me. Do you see where this is going?
Remember that I mentioned someone named “Admiro”? Admiro was to have arranged all of our transport from the border back to Maputo. Dear Admiro…SERIOUSLY?! Back to the story:
Priscilla and I met up with Miguel in the parking lot in front of the Vodacom store. In my mind, I imagined that he would be waiting for us in his taxi, ready to drive us up to Maputo, but au contraire mon frères. To our surprise, he walked us over to where the collective taxis, locally known as “chapas”, were waiting. Oh dear, oh dear I thought, something has gone terribly wrong. Before I knew it, Miguel was haggling the driver to force him to give us two seats in his chapa. All I could think was that Admiro would surely show up with the taxi at any minute.
Alas, as our bags were flung into the chapa and we were all of a sudden whisked up onto seats supported by cardboard boxes filled with rice, I knew that this was our “taxi”. I glanced at Priscilla who seemed not amused by the transport that I promised would be quick and safe, but after our initial discomfort, she said, “Well, it will be an adventure!”. We smiled and tried to settle in to our seats that weren’t actually seats. After a few moments, my phone started buzzing and a new character named, Franco, speaking in Portuguese, asked me to hand the phone over to anyone on the chapa who spoke Portuguese. I selected the man seated next to Priscilla who seemed nice and who didn’t speak a word to us or anyone up until this point. The rest of the chapa was alive with chatter as people in the front laughed at the jokes being made by a hefty man seated just behind us. The van capacity was supposed to be 11, but we were a party of 15.
I handed the phone to Mr. Silent and he told me that we were on the right chapa. I should mention that at this point, we were not told exactly where we were going by Miguel and the whole time, I thought we were being taken to a nearby stop where this new magical man named Franco was going to find us. After 45 minutes, I realized that we were going to be on the chapa for the entire duration of the trip. Mr. Silent at this point had spoken to Franco about five more times as Franco apparently was quite worried that we were put in a chapa. About an hour in, a few passengers became inquisitive as to why in the hell the two of us were in the chapa in the first place. Apparently, very few foreigners travel by chapa. We explained that we had absolutely no idea much to the delight of everyone in the chapa as evidenced by the laughter that ensued. A man sitting wedged between the driver and another man in the front piped up and said that he spoke English. He told me that he would speak to me in English if I only spoke to him in Portuguese. “Perfeito,” I responded and then proceeded to speak Portañol for the duration of the trip. Of course, while trapped in a chapa, nothing you say is private and the man behind me suddenly chimed in that he too spoke English. He asked me where I was from and repeated, America multiple times while smiling. I smiled back and made an instant friend.
Before I knew it, a bottle of whisky appeared and everyone in the chapa was being served by my new friend. He offered Priscilla a cup and when she refused, he instantly handed me her loaded cup, somehow knowing that I would not pass it up. I took a few sips and felt the sting of whisky in the back of my throat (not my drink of choice). The two ladies sitting next to the man with the whisky sipped from their cups smiling as they watched me hack a little. I had now just made two more friends on the chapa. As we puttered along, a conversation started from the back of the chapa all the way to the front. I had no idea what languages were being spoken, but it was certainly not Portuguese or Bitonga. The driver seemed very determined to get us to Maputo before sunset and overtook various cars at a ridiculously slow speed such that oncoming traffic seemed to approach us quicker than we could pass. Thank god for the whiskey! We passed other chapas filled to the brim with passengers all heading to Maputo. Pet goats (okay, not pets, but I needed to tell myself this to feel better) were strapped to the tops of some chapas looking frightened as we whizzed passed.
My phone started to buzz somewhere about 30 minutes outside of Maputo. It was Franco again asking to speak with the man seated next to Priscilla. I smiled gingerly at the man and he obliged albeit with an inner eye roll I am certain. “He will be there when we arrive,” he said in Portuguese and I nodded as if I knew what was going on. Priscilla looked at me with some worry as the sun had now almost set and we hadn’t reached Maputo.
As we approached Maputo, and the sun slipped behind the city skyline, the glare of onward traffic lights filled the van and chatter dissipated into yawns. At this point, I was certain we would be dropped off at the bus depot, but as we neared and then passed the bus depot, my phone rang again. Franco explained that he would meet us on the road and hung up. I glanced at Priscilla who had started to hum lightly. I would soon find out that Priscilla hummed to calm her spirit and humming was her sign of distress. The van jolted to a stop and the driver turned to us and said, “You don’t get out. Too dangerous.” Priscilla’s humming paused and then quickened. My phone rang again, and Franco said he was crossing the street. I assured the driver that our taxi driver was approaching, and he allowed us to get out, but only if we stayed close to the van. Our friends in the van were also quite protective of us and stood around chatting with us until Franco arrived. Tall, lanky and with a bounce in his step, Franco came to the van and welcomed us to Maputo with a smile. Priscilla finally stopped humming upon laying eyes on Franco and all seemed well once again. However, as we walked away from the protection of the van, Franco, Priscilla and I were suddenly surrounded by street hawkers and other taxi drivers wondering if we needed a ride. Franco shouted in Portuguese at the men as we strolled along the dirt path on the side of the road. The men immediately scurried away in some sort of code of taxi driver etiquette, but one lingered. Franco made conversation with the man and then turned to us, pointed at a nearby tuk-tuk and said, “just one moment, sit in the tuk-tuk.” He pulled back the curtain to the tuk tuk and ushered us in quickly. Why in the hell were we in a tuk-tuk on the side of a dirt road in the outskirts of Maputo and where was Franco’s taxi?
We heard a lot of yelling and back and forth and then the curtain opened, and Franco rushed us out of the tuk-tuk mumbling under his breath. As we walked aimlessly up the road, Franco explained that the man was trying to over-charge for the tuk-tuk because we are white. WHAT?!?!?!?!? First of all, I am not white I explained as I realized that traveling with Priscilla was now a liability due to her translucent white skin. She stared at me blankly. “Franco, I am not white,” and he replied, “but you are like a cappuccino, you are not black, and you are foreign, so they want to charge you more.” We continued to walk in the dark with car lights shining on our legs and instead of getting into an argument with Franco, I decided to find out just where in the hell he was taking us. “Where is your taxi, Franco?! We did not order a tuk-tuk, we were told that you would pick us up at the border with a taxi!” He stopped on the side of the road as the cars whizzed by to enter into a round-about up ahead. Franco explained, “Well, you see today,” he started as he put his hand up to stop traffic and ran with us across the rotary, he then continued, “I had taxi problems, problems with my taxi.” In my mind I thought, okay, I get car trouble, but is there a reason on this earth that you couldn’t have said that about four hours ago when we started this whole debacle? Realizing that this is the Mozambican way, I calmly asked why we were not told he did not actually have a taxi? He had no explanation, but said, “I am here now, all will be okay now, we will have a taxi now.” Still though, we were walking on the side of the road with our backpacks. Franco diverted back to his explanation that the reason we now had to walk was to drop something off at the bus depot (where we were supposed to be dropped off in the first place!) and to “check on something”.
Priscilla’s humming was at an all-time high as Franco rushed us onto the embankment of the rotary and it hit a fever pitch as we passed an informal community of seemingly homeless people living under the bridge near the bus depot. I sure as hell wouldn’t do this in New York so I wondered how in the hell it was possible that I was now in Maputo scurrying around under bridges in the night. Tumbles of trash hit our legs and Franco served as a barrier to men who approached us. He waved them off and told us to walk faster as he tried to explain that he still had to “check something, don’t worry!”. We finally arrived to the bus depot and entered the gates. “Taxi? Taxi? Taxi? Taxi?”, asked the fifteen drivers all waiting for their next fare. Franco again waved them away and led us to where the buses departed and told us to wait. He disappeared into the fray of men standing around. No women in sight. Priscilla and I locked eyes and made small chatter to make it seem like we were deep in conversation. Within a few moments, Franco re-appeared and told us to follow him. Not more than 30 meters he stopped, turned to us and said, “Ladies, we have two options, this green car or this taxi.” He stood in front of the taxis with his palms open looking like a used car salesman. I looked at Priscilla who deeply inhaled and exhaled several times and then I quickly switched my focus to Franco. “Seriously?! Franco, you walked us to the bus depot across a rotary to put us in someone else’s taxi?!” You see, this whole time, I was certain that we were walking to a vehicle that he actually drove or owned. Nope.
Realizing the error of his ways, or perhaps not, Franco insisted on coming with us in the taxi to ensure our safe arrival to our final destinations. Priscilla piped up and with confusion and rage in her voice she said, “So you want to put us in a taxi that isn’t yours, but you want to come with us to make sure we arrive safely after putting us in a chapa and not telling us any information?” Franco smiled, waved his hands and warmly said, “yes, yes, I have a duty to get you to your destinations safely, don’t worry, I will ask you for no money.” Did this loon think we were actually going to pay him?!
The taxi ride was silent. As we approached Priscilla’s hostal, she finally gave a sigh of relief, and before I knew it we were saying our goodbyes. She hugged me, giggled and hopped out of the taxi. I burst out laughing, almost uncontrollably and waved goodbye as she pranced through the archway to the promise land.
Franco, the taxi driver and I finally arrived at my friend’s house. Franco escorted me out of the taxi and walked me to my friend’s building. “You see, I told you I would make sure that you arrived at your final destination safely,” he said with such enthusiasm and pride that I couldn’t help but agree. We were safe and we made it. Whatever anger I had disappeared at the sight of this man’s kind smile. I thanked him, shook his hand and said goodbye. “You are most welcome,” he replied and once again, he disappeared into the ether of the night.
I took the elevator to the top floor of my friend’s apartment building trying to make sense of what just happened. She opened the door and said, “They put you in a chapa?! Oh my god! I am Mozambican and I refuse.” I laughed and said, “We had whiskey! It was fantastic! I made friends and had no idea where we were going the entire time.” She rolled her eyes, then sighed and said, “I love my people,” as she guided me to the living room for some tea.
I spent a few days in Maputo before heading back up to Tofo. To get back to Tofo, the only available option I had was to get on the “Etrago” bus. No, there is zero information online about this bus. Yes, you can buy tickets on the bus. Yes, people buy them in advance from the bus depot or at a convenience store (don’t remember the name of it, but there is one shop that sells tix). No, the bus does not leave from the actual bus depot, it leaves from the side street down the way. Yes, people have assigned seats so if you get on the bus, make sure you are not sitting in someone else’s seat or face a death stare. No, there is no bus waiting room or anything so show up and get on or wait in your taxi driver’s car with the doors locked in the wrong place for about 30 minutes before almost missing the bus because your taxi driver had no idea what he was doing or where the bus left from. Yes, the bus only stops once the entire nine hour trip unless a pack of women who have to use the bathroom demands that the bus stop on the side of the road. No, you cannot get out with the pack of women to use the bathroom if you do not have a capulana to cover your ass while peeing. Yes, you will need to hold your pee an additional several hours because you stupidly do not have a capulana to cover your assets. Yes, the bus will overheat and the engine at the front of the bus will be opened and exposed on several occasions spewing fumes and heat throughout the bus. Yes, this bus is your best option.
Lessons learned:
Always carry a capulana with you in Mozambique.
