So, believe it or not, but my time in Mozambique is almost over. And to celebrate this big event, me and B went to Northern Mozambique to see how life is in the most Islamic and least Portuguese-speaking part of this beautiful country. So, what are the results? We didn’t meet any elephants or lions, dammit, but plenty of monkeys and sealife. Our journey started actually still in Sofala province, where we live, in paradise beach Savane to celebrate B’s birthday and the beginning of the end. From Beira a few days later we got onto a plane from a fabulous company called Air Corridor and flew to Nampula. Through Pemba. If you look at the map, you’ll see why I pointed it out. And we flew in the cockpit. J the story is, that the owner of the Savane resort knew the pilot and sent him just a little note written on a piece of paper. We gave it to a stewardess to pass it on to the pilot, and there we were, 5 minutes later, sitting and chatting with the pilots, enjoying the view, having 1st class snacks, announcing messages to the cabin crew through the loudspeaker etc. It was so much fun!:) the fun seemed to have ended in Nampula, where it was already dark when we got there and we had no transport to Nacala, our first goal to arrive to (almost 200 km away). So, hanging around the airport, a woman in a nice red 4WD car asked us where we are going and said, yeah, hop on, let’s go to Nacala! Amazing! Antonia took us to beautiful Humana center and during next few days picked us up to go to Nacala town for seafood lunch and dinners in her sister’s house several times…. I have never eaten that much seafood in my life… fish, calamari, prawns, octopus, lobster…. Oh my god… and she also took us on a trip to Ilha de Mocambique, one of the most touristic places around here. I mean, we mostly stayed in a car and only walked around a bit, I wish I could have had time to wonder around a bit more, but we saw most of it and it was really beautiful and really poor so the amazing beach is also an amazing toilet…
We also had our first curandeiro (the witch doctor) experience. Antonia took us there, of course. This curandeiro is famous for his “talking pot” that is supposedly able to tell one about the future and health and whatever. So we went to check it out. It was quite interesting actually. Every village has a curandeiro and it’s easy to recognize the house as it’s usually colourfully painted with different symbols and pictures. And as we learned, also inside. The funny thing is that there is also a price list and this kind of posters on the wall next to mystical symbols. Anyway, there actually was something “talking” in or around the little pot, sounding like a small child who has not quite learned to form the words yet but.. first of all, it only spoke macua, the local language so we couldn’t ask any questions. And in my case it refused to say anything, the curandeiro interprating it like my life was perfect, there is nothing to comment…
Our next stopping point after Nacala was Pemba, a very touristic town about 6 hours from Nacala. It has an amazing beach (amazing from around noon with high tide, not so nice, full of seaweed etc before that), a five star hotel, but not much else. It also felt quite unsafe for us, especially when we wandered around ghostly center with ruins of former glorious houses and empty, dusty streets. One evening I managed to go to theatre second time during last six months – it was an international work, co-operation between actors from I think 6 African countries (Portuguese and French speaking ones). They used masks and other traditional elements which was cool. And actually, it was a really good piece, although hardly half an hour long. And it started, of course, almost 3 hours after the announced time, and before the actual play, the audience was forced to live through several other performers, including two women’s culture groups (which was not too bad), supertoosexy teenage dance (very bad) and a young guy singing romantic cheesy songs (just guess…)…
From Pemba we had a looong but quite comfy bus ride to the very north of Mozambique, a village called Mueda. There was supposed to be the best place to see a traditional dance with masks called mapiko and also, the village should have amazing views over a huge valley… Note the word should. When we finally got there (after like 10 hours in a bus, entertaining the locals through the window and failing to take any pictures of hundreds of fast monkeys on the road and not going out to pee because the road was in the bush full of elefants and lions and other creatures that we did not see) it turned out that the mapiko group cannot perform and no locals had heard of any view. I tried to explain in my ever getting worse Portuguese about hills and valleys, but most people only spoke suahili and other languages, so I probably couldn’t make myself understood. Our disappointment was even greater when we learned from a French couple later that night that the view not too far from the hostel was really breathtaking. Hakuna matata!
So, the very next morning we took the bus again very early in the morning to find ourselves in a little junction village called Macomia. Our new destination was Pangane, an undiscovered paradise beach North from Pemba. And it w a s amazing…. Totally white sand, the bluest sea you can ever imagine, long coconut trees ending in the deep, blue sky with a few occasional cotton-seeming clouds. Even the people were so beautiful, very very dark, their faces long and maybe having a drop of asiatic features in them… many women wore white masks made from a misuri tree to make one’s skin soft and nice. Of course, we had to try it out as well. Well, I don’t know about other side effects, but our faces got rather sunburnt under the masks, because we forgot the sun cream. And I managed to burn my legs as well… stupid me… Anyway, the paradise would have been complete if there wouldn’t have been 25 friendly, but a bit too loud middle-aged+ Italians…plus a very proper British family. And in the last night, 5 tanned and bearded guys stepped to the beach from a little boat… Me and Barbara went to sleep at 8 o’clock, like usually, of course.
What else happened in our journey? We saw dolphins, got even more sick and tired of Humana People to People and arrived safely in Lamego to stay here just for a week more. Most people head straight home, I think only 3 or 4 people from our team of 12 are going on to Camp Future, which for me means Durban, SA and from there, who knows… Plans are connected to Malawi…
22. August 06 still in Lamego
Kristiina
