Days 116 thru 118

(Rhia’s comments are italicized)

For our last two days in Mozambique, we chose to stay at a guesthouse a mere 500 meters from the airport, right on the main road, and a literal stones throw from the railroad track 🙄. This gave us a chance to experience Maputo outside of the metro and tourist area. It’s a whole different world! There doesn’t seem to be the homelessness, but people are surviving on very little! During our stay, we saw a man and woman (not a couple, if you catch my drift) use the accommodations for a mere hour. This is what you get for staying in cheap places; you see the seedier side of life.

On one day, we walked toward the airport to find a place to eat. The large roundabout was surrounded by walls with beautiful murals painted on them.

There were about 2 dozen pictures of animals that decorated this wall. But I felt it was created to hide what was behind it. For certain, as there were corrugated homes behind and that wouldn’t have given visitors a good first impression of Mozambique.

Walking along the same road away from the airport, there is a deep, open sewer running along the side. There is no railing to stop someone from falling in, and often, the bridges are 8 inch i-beams stretched across. Children as young as two played along the side, seemingly without an adult.

Also, during our walk, we came to a Hero’s Park which was situated in the middle of a roundabout. We crossed the street to visit the park, but just before we got to the star in the center, a soldier came running toward us, rifle nestled in the crook of one arm, while the other arm was struggling to place her cover (a hat for you civilian folk) onto her head. She spoke no English, so we had to assume that we had, once again, unknowingly, wandered into a restricted space. We smiled and promptly left the park out of the closest exit. This is the second time in Mozambique that we’ve been redirected by a soldier carrying a rifle! Thankfully, they assume we’re just ignorant tourists so they’re not aggressive with us.

Along our route, trash bins were overflowing into the street and sewer, and venders used old brushes to push the dirt and garbage into piles at the sides of there displays.

What I am describing is the real Mozambique. This is the experience of most of the population. We do our best to support the local residents by buying directly from the street vendors, or by eating at local establishments. Funny story about a restaurant we ate at. We walked in and asked for a menu. The lady looked at us funny and went to fetch someone who spoke English. Basically, they served whatever they had made, which, I must say, was very good that day. We got grilled chicken with rice and some stew on top, as well as a salad. The cost was less than $2 each. While we were there eating, quite a few individual men walked in to be served the same meal. There was a community feel about the place that I actually enjoyed. The chair were made out of pallet planks that were nailed together. This made them VERY rickety, and I almost broke one when I tried to push it back while I was sitting on it.

While in Ponta do Ouro, we had to eat extremely frugally because of them not accepting our credit card (MasterCard). We managed fine, but were looking forward to a good meal (maybe curry?) that we could put on our credit card. This seems like such a simple thing to do in the US and Europe; but it’s different here. Because we weren’t staying in the tourist area, we only found mom-and-pop local restaurants. Thus, we found ourselves having acceptable credit cards but with nowhere to use them! We take so much for granted!!

Now we get to attempt reentering South Africa. Our 90 day visa expired on August 2nd. Rules say you cannot get another for another 6 months. But we were informed that because we had only been in South Africa for less than 30 days of our visa. So the challenge is to convince immigration that we were only in South Africa for less than 30 days of the 90 days, so we should be allowed in for the 7 days until our flight, right?…

🎉🎉🎉 We’re pleased to report that we were absolutely right! 🎉🎉🎉 Why did we even worry? Our immigration experience was the smoothest it had ever been, and we got another 90 day visa stamped into our passports, without a single question being asked. Unreal! I think the immigration officer made a huge mistake, but we’re just going to play dumb if questioned.

And so ends our Mozambique experience, and our last week in Africa begins.