Filed under: Mozambique, Tanzania | Tags: Adventure, Community, Development, Mtwara, Pemba, Sunset
i am going to try to cover some of the more unique experiences in less text than they deserve … readdddy … go …
mtwara … little city in the corner of tanzania … ramadan is in full swing on the swahili coast, so lots of people not eating during the day … i took a long walk in the late afternoon trying to find the sea … ended up at a little harbour hanging out with local fisherman … does fishing with a net seem somewhat like genocide to you ??? … very cool place … the people are kind, but shy … so i can walk around without having people yell at me constantly … only smiles and happy greetings … so nice … anyway …
i am walking back to the guest house as the sun is going down … sunsets in the place are beyond description … suffice to say … the moon is vibrant and silver and rests, without competition, in a sea of pale blue … the pink surrounds you in 360 degrees and what clouds exist are dark on top, with whisps of gold fire swirling off of them … the gold, pink and blue combine with the dusty colour of the ground to make the world around literally glow … the outlines of the palm trees, some 15m tall, stand out black in sharp contrast to the glowing sky beyond … an endless stream of bicycles whizz past, broken by women dressed in the vibrancy of african colours laughing with women dressed in conservative muslim black … children play in the trees, in the dirt and zip across the road … the birds sing, cars pass blaring ‘bongo flava’ (swahili hip-hop), and the soft cry of the call to prayer rings out … wow …
anyway … so lots of the people don’t eat until after dark … so sometimes it is hard to find a place to eat … so i head out after dark to get some food … but the region is remote, so it is hard to find english speakers … i ask the lady at the guest house … she says ’stage’ … this sounds kind of strange … the bus stage usually has kids selling snacks, and i know there are stands selling chips mayei … but they are not a place for real meals … i am skeptical … but head on …
i find some men sitting on benches by the roadside eating … something … they invite me to join them … i say ‘ninakwena wali and nyama’ (i am looking for rice and meat’) … they say … ’stage’ …
bus stages all over africa are the same … they buzz with activity all day, as busses come and go … kids run from bus to bus, selling local food, water and candy through the windows … they are usually surrounded by shops selling pirated music, quick meals and simple hardware, electronics, etc … not really a place for meals … during the day …
i round the corner and am BLOWN away … the whole stage is JAMMED full of people … they are sitting everywhere … on benches in rows and in ciricles, on the curbs and on the ground … and EVERYONE is eating, as hundreds of candles illuminate the square and the music that blares out of local shops all day sets the perfect soundtrack for the little festival …
i do my old ‘look like a confused white guy’ routine until somebody offers help … and of course they do … and i am soon holding a steaming plate piled high with some kind of mystery meat (i think it was sheep stomach), and cooked banana in a thick g-nut sauce … sooooooo good !!! … it’s amazing the power of food to bring people together … i shared a meal with people who i did not share a language with … for 10 minutes we laughed and joked and smiled … and didn’t understand a word …
every night, mtwara comes together after dark and celebrates … they share food and laughs … music and drinks … they cook over open fires and sit on the ground … who thinks our way of life is better ???
the next morning i was up at 4:30 … and on the back of a pickup truck by 5:00 … i was in the back of the truck … along with 13 other people … and our luggage … tearing at high speed over dirt tracks through the forest as the sun began to light up the sky and the people of tanzania came to life for another day … not really comfortable … but it was only an hour … so who can complain …
tanzania immigration was easy … and then we all reboarded our little truck and headed to the mighty river … only now it is dry season … so it was not so much mighty as muddy … we loaded up a boat and got about 15 feet out before the boat bottomed out … one by one, the guys started to take off their shoes and pants, hop in the croc infested water, and push … one by one until it was my turn … and so … i was soon in the croc infested water … pushing a boat full of smuggled used clothing across the fronteir into remote northern mozambique …
after 15 minutes or so, we found the deep spot and let the prop do the rest of the work … it was a lazy 30 minutes as we sailed past flamigoes and pods/herds/??? of hippos … the other side, the calmness of southern tanzania faded like a candle being blown out and the insanity of northern mozambique descendced … people rushed the boat and started shouting and grabbing everything they could … before i really even knew what was happening, i was in the back of a medium sized suv, bouncing hard over the rutted roads of the north …
eventually we came to a series of shacks in the bush which i was told were immigration … its always a little unnerving being escorted by a big black guy with an ak-47 into a tiny room in a wooden shack in the middle of nowhere … it’s even more unnerving when the guy in the room, an older man dressed from head to foot in olive green, with huge coke-bottle glasses … takes off those glasses and asks me, with a highly unimpressed look … “why have you not paid the tax? don’t you know there is a tax?” …
it’s really not as intimidating as it sounds … did you know the mozambique flag has an AK-47 on it ??? … i didn’t … interesting thing to put on a flag … after about an hour of sorting out all the paperwork and appologizing for not paying the ‘tax’ … i was back in the SUV … a little smaller than a suburban … with 13 other people … plus 2 hanging off the back … and 3 more on the roof … tearing through the forrest again … only faster this time …
i have been more comfortable … but the rest stops were unbeatable … eating handfulls of fresh cashews for pennies and drinking/eating coconuts fresh off the tree … life could be worse …
the next … oh … 12 hours or so, are much less interesting … i travelled … watching mozambique pass by the windows … or sitting for 1 hour of africa time (3 hours by your watch) waiting for a ride at a little nothing of a town called mocimboa de pria … i finally arrived at my destination around 10:30pm … wierd place called pemba … it’s poor … really, really poor … a few years ago, mozambique was the poorest in the world … victims of famine and civil war … now those problems are gone … and they are just poor … BUT … there is a huge 5-star resort, and a flawless stretch of highway, complete with street lights, connecting that resort to the airport … strange place, this world of ours …
i am staying at the only place for less than $30/night in town … camping at russel’s place … russel is an aussie … there are LOTS of white people here … you can always spot them … they are the ones driving the cars past the locals … who don’t have shoes … lots of canadians … they just found oil and uranium … mozambique is on the verge of a boom … lots of people getting their fingers in …
there is a HUGE ministry operating here … called Iris … apparently the founders are something of celebs in the christian world … they have planted 7000 churches within the countries of south africa … i have met with their director (a canadian) a couple times, and am going to head to a little community with him in the next hour … so much foreign investment ignores the needs of rural africans … in the most rural continent on the planet, this seems a little stupid …
i want to understand, as much as possible, the system they use to give birth to fully functioning rural ministries … i feel that if the same system can be applied to education in rural economic development, health and sanitation education, HIV awareness, etc … then maybe … who knows …
so that’s what i am up to … pemba is like paradise … endless miles of white sand beaches, bright sunlight and cool ocean breezes … evenings are my favorite time to walk down the beach … which is almost all public, so you can just walk and walk … children, some ass naked, play in the surf … every 100m there is another soccer game in full swing, only feet from the surging waves … on the road that runs along the beach, people hang out dressed in their best and sip beer as they flirt and laugh … and music, a crazy mix of african tradtion, swahili hip-hop, carribean ragga and latin salsa, pounds out from the stage built right on the beach, from the speakers of passing cars, or out the doors of the nearby discos … it’s like a festival … only every week of the year …
too bad they are so poor … such friendly folks … willing to trade anything for the shirt off your back … which i have done … and i will let you guess what i traded for 
…
peace and love from pemba …
