When my Peace Corps contract came to an end, I decided to do some traveling in Africa instead of returning immediately to the states. And serendipitously, my buddy Mike was also wanting to travel some, so we decided to do it together. It turned out to be a good decision. 

Mike was a handsome young guy, about 12 years younger than I was. Women seemed to be naturally attracted to him. He was also, like me, an adventurous person. During his tenure as a teacher in Swaziland, he too, had taken the opportunity to move out on to a homestead and live with a Swazi family. His abilities to speak SiSwati were better than mine. He was energetic, and positive, and self motivated. He had come to Peace Corps from Pittsburgh, having quit his job as Regional Sales Manager for Graco, and could make decisions on the fly, without a lot of hemming and hawing. I was 40, and could do that too. That may have been our biggest strength.

The night before we left to begin our journey together, we met at the Technical College in Mbabane, and there was a big party of volunteers. We ate, and drank beer, and talked about, as always, teacher things. My pack was heavily laden. I had the things that I thought I would need over the coming months of hitching around southern Africa. Every nook and cranny was jammed. And it was heavy. I had a small camping stove, a pot and a pan to cook with, a plate and bowl, and cup, my sleeping bag, tent, thermarest, a couple pairs of shorts, a pair of pants, my flip flops, my journal, letter writing stuff, some rolls of film, my camera, binoculars, a bottle of instant coffee, a small bottle of cooking oil, and miscellaneous things of use in traveling. That doesn’t sound like much, but it was heavy, and took some effort to hoist onto my shoulders.

During the party, someone had found my pack, and took the things from the big pocket on the front, and squeezed them in other places, and stuffed the pocket with condoms. Condoms were free from Peace Corps, and evidently, someone had raided their big bowl of condoms that were available in the Volunteer lounge in the PC office. I didn’t notice this until Mike and I were a couple days into traveling. I wasn’t sexually active, and wondered what I would do with 50 or so condoms.

Our first stop was Maputo, Mozambique, where there lived a drop dead gorgeous woman named China, who Mike had met during his other travels. She invited us to stay with her for a week, so we did. I only have three clear memories of Maputo. Maputo was the capitol of the country, and had suffered the wrath of the Portuguese, who had lost the war for independence from them about 6 months before that, and had done nasty things like pouring cement into the sewage pipes, and sabotaging the electric generating plant, which had left the city almost paralyzed. I also remember the bathroom in China’s house, where the walls were completely tiled with broken pieces of various colored tile, and mirror, and random things like bottle caps, and small doll heads. It was a work of art. And the other thing I remember was that one day I was sitting outside her house, and across the street was a man, putzing around with the plants in his yard. He greeted me, and we chatted, and he invited Mike and I over to drink a beer. His name was Chissano, and he was the National Artist of Mozambique, and world renowned. His house was a museum of his art. He worked in various mediums, and did painting, sculpting, and mixed media displays. We wandered through his galleries, amazed by his abilities, and drank more beer, and by the time we had seen all of the galleries, we were all pretty drunk. Chissano especially. We sat at a table with him, and talked about his journey through life, and we told him the stories of ours. Eventually he passed out, and Mike and I staggered across to Chinas house.

A day later, we walked to the bus station, and were going to catch a bus going north. While in the bus station, I really had to pee, so I told Mike not to let the bus leave without me, and walked over to the public restroom. I opened the door, and the restroom was hideous inside. But I really had to pee, so I tiptoed through the inch of poopy pee water on the floor to a toilet, and let fly. As I was emptying my bladder, I heard the bus engine start outside, and Mike was yelling, “Come on Maseko, we are leaving!” So I pinched it off, and splashed out to the bus, and got on just as they were closing the doors, and went back to where Mike had a seat. As I sat down, I looked at Mike, and said, 

“Do you have a machete?”

“No, why?”

“Because I never want to touch my shoes again, even to take them off, so I figured that cutting my legs off at the ankles would be best.”

Our plans for traveling were just a general outline. We wanted to travel north through Mozambique, and eventually cross into Zimbabwe, travel around there for a while and see the Great Zimbabwe Ruins, go north to Binga to visit a volunteer he knew there,  and then to Malawi to hike up Mount Mulange, and head north toward Tanzania, and across Tanzania to Dar es Salam, and then take the ferry out to Zanzibar Island, and after exploring there, fly back to the States. We figured 3 months of traveling, but neither of us was in a hurry.

The bus dropped us off a couple hours north, and turned around to go back to Maputo. North of there, was country that was still disputed by some local tribes of people, and travel was relegated to catching rides on flatbed trucks that bravely plied their routes through the disputed areas. We hopped on one flatbed, and went on. Left from the war for independence, every couple miles, there were trenches cut through the pavement across the width of the road, that had been to stop traffic during the war. They had mostly been filled with gravel. We bumped through them slowly. There were 5 or 6 women, and  a dozen men, and bags of produce, and some goats, and chickens on board with us. Every so often, we would stop for a pee break. The women would walk up the road in front of the truck, and the men would walk back behind it. And do their bidness in the road. I asked a man why nobody went off the road for privacy, and he told me that there were so many landmines left from the war, that it was dangerous to go off the pavement. Oh. I had noticed a lot of people with crutches and prosthetic legs and arms, and that was why… they had left the pavement, and stepped on a mine.

We eventually got off the truck in a small town, and went looking for a campground that was shown on the map that we had. We found it, and were setting up our tents for the night, and a small boy, Armando, 12 years old, came by. With Mike and myselfs small facility in Spanish, and some SiSwati, which was vaguely similar to Si Shangani, the local language other than Portuguese, we were able to understand that Armando was telling us that camping in the park would draw thieves, who would come in the night, and steal our stuff. He invited us to come and stay on his homestead, where we would be safe. We followed him there. The homestead family was made up of a collection of war orphans whose families had been killed. The “elders” were a boy of about 16, and a girl of about 14, and the rest were Armando and some small children. They had formed their own family, to work together to get food and have a safe place to live. The oldest boy had a small boat, and the kids would go out fishing on the ocean in the mornings, and bring back fish to eat, and to sell in the market for money to buy staples. We stayed there for a couple days.

The oldest girl, whose name was so unpronounceable that I called her Ruthie, which was a sound of part of her name, stayed behind, and I sat and talked to her during the days. Intrepid Mike went out fishing with the others, in their crowded small boat. Our communication was difficult, but we persevered. She was curious about where we were from, and I was curious about how they had gotten together to form the family. I was taking a picture of her one day, and noticed some bumps around her neck, running down into her blouse, that were the size of the erasers on a pencil. I asked her about them. She was from a tribe of people that used scarring as decoration, and she was proud of them. She told me that she had done them herself, by puncturing her skin, and rubbing ashes into the wound, and picking off the scab, until it made scar tissue of the size she wanted. She signed for me to wait a minute, and she went into her hut, and came out a few minutes later with no clothes on, and a semi-rusty 16 penny nail, which she had used to make the scars with. And would I take a picture of her and send it to her when I got the pictures back? Heck yeah. The scars formed a chain that went around her neck and down between her breasts, where the sides crossed over each other, and separated as they wound down to encircle her waist. There must have been a hundred bumps. I was stunned. In a horridly fascinating way, they were beautiful. I don’t know if I value beauty enough to do that to myself with a rusty nail.

The family was a family.There were 8 of them. Even though not related, every one put in their effort, and the family was surviving and succeeding. Each of the members had been found by the family, wandering around alone after the war, and invited to come be a part of them. I was amazed at how well they did. 

We headed north through palm tree forests, and through a jungle with big trees and Liana vines hanging down from the trees, with parrots and monkeys scampering. I kept expecting to hear Tarzan yodeling. Eventually we came to a crossroads little town, which also showed a campground on our map. It was, in fact, a campground that was in operation, run by a British man, who lived in a trailer there. We set up camp. That afternoon we walked over to the beach, and found a small restaurant there, with nobody but a young girl, who was the waitress / cook. We sat down and she handed us menus. There was quite a selection of food on the menu.

Me: I’ll have a hamburger with fries please

The Girl: We don’t have that

Mike: I’ll have the shrimp stew and spaghetti, please.

The Girl: We don’t have that.

Me: How about the baked fish?

The Girl: No, (she shook her head)

Me: What do you have, then?

The Girl: Squid and rice.

Mike: Ok, we will have two of those, with cokes.

She smiled and went away. She came back in a while with two warm cokes in bottles. Almost everywhere that I traveled in southern Africa over my three years there, had coke. It may not have been cold, but water was not drinkable in many places, and Mike and I stayed with coke or beer, mostly warm. A little later the girl came back with two plates of pieces of squid in a tomato sauce, on a pile of rice. We dug in, and it was fabulous! The best squid I have ever eaten. We both belonged to the clean plate club when we sat back from eating. Sitting at the edge of a palm tree forest, in a grass hut, on the beach, listening to the waves of the Indian Ocean lapping at the shore. It was heaven. Around dark we went back to camp.

The next morning Mike was talking to the British guy, and he said he was building a resort out on the end of a long arm of land that extended out in the ocean, and was only accessible by boat, and did we want to see it? Yep. So the next day we caught a sailboat that cruised up and down the shore and took people to remote locations on the beach, like a water taxi. It dropped us off at the British guys’ resort in process. He showed us around. It was mostly just one building so far, and even that was not complete. But it had a roof and walls and window and door openings, and the location was gorgeous. We stayed there for a couple days. The second evening, sitting around in the resort building, talking to the Brit, he told me the story of how he was building the resort. I had told him that I was a carpenter back home, and he wanted to know if I wanted to stay there for a month, and work on the resort, and he would pay me a million Meticais, the devalued currency of Mozambique. That’s right, a million. I would be a millionaire. I looked at Mike, who was a math guy, and he smiled and said, “That’s about $330 US, Sam”  Well, it might have been an interesting month, and I could certainly use a 300 dollar shot in my travel budget, but nope. What would Mike do for the month? So, the next day we sailed back to the campground.

The following day, I was walking along the beach, and ran into a young man who came over and tried to sell me some pretty Tourmalines he had found washed into the ocean. I was not in the market for tourmalines. But we walked along together for a while, and would write words and draw pictures in the sand and do charades to communicate, laughing and running back and forth looking at our sand drawings, and we told each other our stories like that. His name was Rodrigo. Resting between sand drawings, he asked me if I might want to buy some pot. He made the universal sign, with pinched fingers and puffing on them. I had not smoked any for a while, but, yes, I was game. He said it was expensive, 3,500 meticais. About $3. Ok. I gave the money to him. So he took me to a homestead on the beach, made of woven palm leaves, and introduced me to a family there, with whom I had no common language. We sat and signed and played charades to communicate. People always wanted to know the same things. Who was I, where was I from, and why was I here? Rodrigo signed to me that he was going to go, and would be back in a short time, and he gestured to my day pack, and made the motions of putting something into it. I nodded, and he took my pack, and disappeared into the palm trees. As he disappeared, I realized that in the bottom of my pack were my travelers checks, and my camera. At least I still had my passport which I wore in a small pouch inside my shirt. I said a prayer that he not rip me off and never come back. I spent a couple of pleasant hours with the family, drinking warm coke, and exchanging stories. I was getting really nervous about two hours later, when I heard a “Sssssssttt!” and I looked over, and there was Rodrigo, with my pack. Oh, Thank God. 

I said my goodbyes to the family, and we walked back down to the beach, where he handed my pack to me. I felt through the bottom as I took it, the shapes of my camera and my travelers checks wallet. I smiled at him. I had had no idea how much pot that $3 would buy me. My day pack was stuffed like a sausage, full to the hilt. I said goodbye to Rodrigo, and headed back to the campground. Sitting at the picnic table with Mike, later, I dumped my day pack out, and there must have been two or three pounds of pot. Mike told me he had never smoked pot, and didn’t know much about it, and how long would that much pot last me? Holy crap. About a year, I told him. I put it in a paper grocery bag, and would roll joints out of it when I felt like smoking one. There were no rolling papers in Africa. Joints were rolled like cigars, out of newspaper, and you puffed off them slowly, so that most of the smoke was pot, and only a little was the harsh newspaper. The pot was good stuff. 

A week later, we were riding on a flatbed truck, heading towards the border crossing into Zimbabwe. I still had 15/16ths of the pot left, and I knew that Zimbabwe was a strict border, and they would search our packs. I was waiting for a more remote area, where I planned to toss the bag of pot to the side of the road. As I was waiting, we came into an area with a lot of little stores on the sides of the road. It was the border gate up ahead. Oh, shit! I reflexively threw the bag off the truck, and it went in between some of the shops. Out of nowhere, three small boys appeared, and squatted down, and looked in the bag. They looked up at me as I was passing, decided I wasn’t gonna jump down and recover it, and they took off running with the bag. 

We crossed the border with no problems. And headed for Mutare, Zimbabwe. There was a campground there with showers and a pool. It would be good to get the traveling dust washed off. But that is a story for chapter two.

Traveling Rocks    <3

Being Humble Matters    <3