Traveling in Mozambique is not easy. Traveling in the north of Mozambique is a whole beast of its own. I recently spent Cinco de Mayo (that’s Spanish, not Portuguese) on Ilha de Mocambique (now this is Portuguese), where my friend was celebrating his birthday. On the sixth of May, I began my travels back to site in the morning with my buddy Sam. Samuel and I had an epic journey that began at 9am, and lasted until 3pm.
First off, for some geography. Ilha de Mocambique is about 200 kilometers by paved highway from Nampula. Therefore, it should take about 2.5 hours to get there. Monapo is a town at junction where one turns to go to Ilha, approximately 45km away from the island. End geography lesson.
Sam and I first began to look for a ride with any ex patriots leaving the island from a weekend away. However, for anybody that knows me, patience is not exactly my forte. It’s a virtue I’m almost always lacking. Sam lacks it also…. So after about an hour of looking, we decided to jump on the chapa getting ready to leave. We asked if they were going to Nampula, they responded affirmatively, that it was direct. So we jumped on. Cool beans. Not the most comfortable, but no chapa is. We set off. Not five minutes down the road, we stop… uh oh. Not a good sign. To lower morale just a little more, 5 cars headed to Nampula (I can only assume anyway) drive past our stopped chapa. This might be the point where Sam and I started swearing and using vulgar words to describe our decision.
But in an attempt to combat our low morale, we told ourselves that it would get faster… sadly not the case. We proceeded to stop at every location that had more than two houses. We picked people up or dropped people off. Each stop was at least ten minutes. It took us over 2 hours to drive 45km. By the time we reached Monapo, Sam and I were near to murder. So we jumped off the chapa, yelled at the person that takes the payment (from now on known as the cobrador) and walked to the junction. It took the cobrador a little time to figure out that we hadn’t paid, but he had a car to catch up with us.
Then proceeded the biggest scene of which I’ve ever been part. First the driver got out to ask if we had paid the cobrador. Sam and I then chewed him out for lying to us, and then refusing to pay. He tried to play it cool, saying that now we were going directly to Nampula. We weren’t buying. So then the cobrador joined, and said we had to pay for it all, which is when the discussion got quite heated. We continued to repeat that they had lied to us, that we now couldn’t arrived at our houses (which was true) the same day because they had taken too much time already, that we still hadn’t arrived where we were going, and that hell would freeze over before we paid them (okay not exactly that, but that’s what we were going for). The driver and cobrador continued to yell at us that we had to pay for arriving in Monapo, and we should pay extra for trying ditch. This happened to become so heated that three police officers sidled on over to our discussion. Sam and I got a bit nervous here. The female police officer (stateside not all that important, but very much so in Moz) asked what the problem was, the driver explained that we had not paid for our trip to Monapo. We then explained that we had asked to go to Nampula directly, they had agreed. The police officer then said that lying to us in that manner was illegal, that the driver should be fined, and that we didn’t have to pay. The driver got really angry here, and had to be physically restrained by his cobrador.
WIN! Sam and I won a shouting match with two very angry Mozambicans. IN PORTUGUESE! Other win: the police supported us over a Mozambican! Double win! They might have taken our time away from us, but we left with our wallets unpinched and police backing us. Usurping our money doesn’t pay after all.
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