a very belated account of a summer holiday

One of the first things to come to me immediately upon gaining entry into that interesting, though poor, cousin to the northeast – mozambique – was “straw huts? Really? In the 21^st century, there are actual straw huts with people, real live people – not 3 little pigs, but people – living in them?”. As the perennial snob in the group, my friends dismissed my incredulity with half-drunken guffaws and more than one “oh maan nawe kanene fumbatha”. But I was serious. It was shocking. Like they were waiting for the wolf to arrive any minute and blow the fuck out of that hut in a jiffy. And sadly, the wolf was already inside the house. Not about to blow it down, but to live. And intimidate, every passing minute a stark reminder of the bare necessities of life, and what they are to those living in that hut – scarce and very nearly miraculous.

My friends may consider me now to be a snob, but I like to think that my “snobbishness” has more to do with knowing poverty first-hand, than with any perceived disdain I may have towards those less fortunate than I. Frankly, even now in my late 20's and with some years of financial independence behind me, the vicious cycle of having and having not is one I continue to tango with precipitously more or less on a monthly basis. The idea of having the trough periods metamorphose into a permanent state of being, is one that chills me. I just tend to say things for effect more than any real meaning I attach to the words coming out of my mouth. For everyone's sake I hope I write better than I speak.

One of the last things to occur to me while there was why were we taking malaria pills where there were clearly millions of people in this country who weren't and, as far as I could tell, some of them were in admirably great health. To be true, we witnessed the fitness every where. From topless twinks on the beach, to muscle marries at the market – we had our fill of candy for days! And none of these young, virile - skin so black makes you think of chocolate brownies and sweet strong coffee – boys and their eyes and their teeth and their walk and their portuguese and...

but ja, none of them were taking malaria pills. The propaganda machine, the counter-revolutionary imperialist media of the west, had duped us into expecting a barrage of malaria-moving mosquitos, baying for fresh new south african blood. We took our pills with water. We took our pills with beer (the local brew, lovingly called Dos M). We took our pills with vodka. I even took one with the slap-dash litchi martini i'd fixed for myself for breakfast on new year's morning. We were, after all, in malaria country don't you know.

But back to the straw huts. So it would seem some have cottoned on to the notion to insulate themselves from the afore-mentioned wolf by building for themselves and theirs, a house of bricks and mortar. That didn't turn out so well either. Indeed we have many slums in south africa, everyone in the world knows that. I was perturbed by the fact that in all our meanderings through townships and what passes for iilali in mozambique, only once – I think on the road to XaiXai beach, or was it somewhere in Bilene? Whatever – only one time did I see a school. Where did the kids go when there were no tourists around? Did they know there was more to life than to be an objet to be gawked at by shoe-string budget tourists such as my friends and I? Some sideshow made up of out-takes from a National Geographic special on the masks and history of the peoples of the province of Cabo Delgado? And later we heard that Frelimo had won a ridiculous portion of the vote (75% was it?) once again for the umpteenth time, and I wondered if the people back home knew or cared. Never in the history of a peaceful, majority ruled mozambique has any other party won the election. I looked for parallels in the ideological civil war currently raging in the halls of power in the ANC with the civil war that gripped this beautiful, exotic piece of paradise in the 80's and wondered. I wondered if maybe that wasn't our trade-off. I wondered if I wasn't fooling myself thinking we'd actually escaped it that easily. Especially given the powder keg it is translating into on the ground.

Then we discovered random wi-fi clouds all over Maputo, and I was convinced I was emigrating. This was the plan: i'd find myself a boy that speaks portuguese – brazilian, angolan or mozambican – and carry on a relationship of a sexual nature with him and learn portuguese; then after a couple of years of hopping from one portuguese bed to the next, careful so as not to catch any spanish fleas, I would quit my job and move to Maputo. Bem? Non?

It would seem, the tsunamis of tourists from all over the globe had insinuated internet culture into everyday mozambican life. And drive-by hacking became our favourite pastime – we were rogue south africans here to steal your internet and you couldn't see us. It was thrilling. It more than made up for the R300 bribe we paid one of the cops for making an illegal u-turn. Upon having the u-shaped arrow encircled in red against a white background with a red line going straight through it pointed out to us by the gentleman in ill-fitting official-looking garb, we protested that we couldn't read portuguese signs. Nonetheless, we parted with three-hundred of kruger's best.

Our relationship with the authorities in mozambique was a strange one. Amidst the chaos at the mozambican side of the border, they barely acknowledged our existence choosing to communicate – if you could call it that – in barely perceptible grunts and vague pointing motions – made half-heartedly and in some mixture of portuguese and whatever other languages are spoken there (we found out also that shangaan and swahili weren't as widely spoken as we expected). Then there was the R300 bribe – it was to come to haunt us later. And then there were the peeps that stopped us and admitted to all our paperwork to be tip-top and A number 1, but couldn't we still bribe them anyway coz they were expecting it anyway so may as well oblige. Thank goodness that was the extent of our interactions with the law. While it may seem that mozambique would be a country that doesn't take it's laws all that seriously, it is surprisingly low crime than one would expect for a country of so many poor people. And then I understood why. There are about 5000 white people in mozambique. In a country of around 22 million.

The correlation I'm trying to draw, racist though it may be, is that black people tend to have not and white people tend to represent the haves – whether they have or not. Add to that a constant referral to the apartheid past and it could be an incitement to lawlessness.

I must say though, that to steal anything only to exchange it for meticais did seem a little farfetched to me for a minute there. For one thing, I found it difficult to take the psychedelically coloured paper seriously. To me it looked like if you, for whatever reason, put it in your mouth you'd be guaranteed the most awesomest acid trip – enough to make you believe you are, indeed God, and burdened with the maintenance of, amongst other things, the upkeep of over 6 billion hapless wonderlings. And for another, it came in such obscene denominations I had to consciously remind myself that there was no chance of me purchasing hotels and houses on Eloff street, and neither did I obtain some of it merely by passing “Begin”. So the concept of theft in pursuit of it's very definition, i.e. so as to unlawfully enrich oneself at the expense of another, seemed somewhat comical to me if said enrichment was to then be measured by so inadequate a store of value. And yet, here they were – beggars and businessmen, hustlers and housewives – all making their own world go around and around and around again. Their conduit for trade? Why the flaccid metical, of course.

So, with a wallet of real leather from Hugo Boss' faux line (purchased from one of many overly eager travelling salesmen at the fish market) full of MT1000 notes that felt like ill-gotten funds, we went on a rampage through the city, buying whatever struck our fancy (read: beer and more beer) and wilfully neglected making the mandatory exchange rate calculation to keep us grounded. There's something empowering about paying by the thousands, even if it is meticais.

The rude awakening came some 14kms from the south african border on our way home. Before we had taken in the spectacle caused by the bottleneck at the border, our cute and oh-so camp drop top conked out. In the fast lane. In the middle of a serious traffic jam. Adventurous travellers that we are, we'd pinned our faith on the universe's ability to correct itself in our favour under the most dire of circumstances. Our faith was tested, but not for long. We pushed the car, awkwardly and with great comedy, to the shoulder of the road. And strategised. There wasn't much MT1200 could do for us at that point, and that was all the cash we had between ourselves. Our strategy was simple: we would sit there and wait until a plan obviated itself. Options were a luxury we could scarce afford at this point, and panic was completely out of the question.

Our faith paid off in time. After a false start with a local towing outfit heading towards the border requiring MT2000 to bring us to the border whereupon we'd have to strategise afresh, a fellow south african happened along in a flatbed truck heading for Inhambane. He was a godsend. He towed us as far as Matola and the universe persisted in revealing its favour towards us.

Mozambican hospitality is a funny animal. For everything there is a price, but for the things that matter no payment is required. After parting with the rest of our meticais in thanks to the kind gentleman of the flatbed, we exchanged south african coins with a group of street urchins – the only mozambican enterprise that will accept foreign coin for exchange, at a steep premium I might add. We bought a few meager snacks at the garage we'd been towed to and waited for an angel. She arrived promptly within half an hour. Our car was attended to and in a couple of days we were ready to brave the journey home once again. In the between time, we were witness to a kind of courtesy that is in severe decline today. We wined, we dined and we learned. For instance we learned that there were indeed schools in the townships. We learned that mozambique was in fact a very very big country and one that I am glad to have visited.