The vagabondary begins: Adventures on the high seas

Written on October 19, 2012:

Hey all,

Greetings from paradise!  I’m in a little fishing town called Pangane in northern Mozambique, sitting in front of my crumbling rock-and-palm-frond bungalow on a windy point facing the Indian Ocean.  It’s been two weeks since I left Mabote for the last time, and just over a week since I finished Peace Corps and officially became a homeless, jobless vagabond!

So far, seeing as how I haven’t left Moz, it feels like I’m just on vacation and will go home to Mabote any day now.  I’m not sure when it will hit me that I won’t be, but maybe it’s better that way.  Hopefully by the time I get back to the states in January – after three months of wandering in Africa, and fresh from Korea – I’ll be so culturally confused that I won’t have much of the reverse culture shock that they warned us about at our final Peace Corps conference... things like crying in the cereal aisle, overwhelmed by the choices and the excess.  If I do that, please smack me and tell me there’s no crying in grocery shopping.

Anyway, I just arrived in Pangane yesterday, back on the mainland after a week of island hopping in the Quirimbas Archipelago.  Finding the first bed I’ve seen all week, I slept for about twelve hours last night and have done little more than read and stare at the ocean today.  So this two and a half day stop-over is definitely going to be a nice, and much needed, recharge.

Cause, man... what a week!  It all started when I met a 60-something Czech man named Boris at baggage claim after my flight to Pemba.  I would never have guessed it when I split a cab with him to the town center, but he became the nucleus of our five-person group of travel companions for the next week, as we sailed around on rickety dhows and camped on beaches.

Boris.  What can I say?  He could be a character in a classic novel: left the former Czechoslovakia as a refugee in his late teens; was stripped of his citizenship during the Communist era (though later got it back); was educated in the U.S. and lived for many years in New York and California; gets his kicks from cold beer, snorkeling, younger women, and traveling to exotic places like a 20-something backpacker; used to be a banker and did a start-up in Silicon Valley; has KGB maps on his smart phone; could out-swim all of us 20-somethings with one arm; and has more stories than the Bible.

The second member of the five-some was Whitney, an American girl who was the only other camper at my campsite on Ibo Island, my first stop after Pemba.  Being the off-season, there were only about five tourists on the island, so I was informed by a local boy even before I met her that there was another one of me wandering around.  And sure enough, when I met her we were both dressed in culturally appropriate-length capaluna skirts, and looked at each other like, “Oh, you must be Peace Corps.”

Turns out, she had just spent a month with a friend in Peace Corps-Zambia, and is scheduled to start Peace Corps-El Salvador in January.  If Boris was the nucleus of our group, Whitney was the glue.  After only a week, I can’t help hearing “Whitney-isms” echoing in my head: expressive phrases for every occasion.  When something goes wrong: “Porqueeeee????” (“Why????”), or, “Oh noooo... what’s gonna happen to us????”  When she’s not happy about something: “Bleeerghhhh.”  When she wants to say “excuse me”: “Sari-saari!”  (Like “sorry,” but pronounced the Zambian way, and sung.)

She made friends everywhere we went, literally greeting every person we passed with “Salaama assana!” (a Makua greeting – one of the local languages), and refusing to let the fact that she doesn’t speak Portuguese get in the way of attempting to have extended conversations with local kids, the dhow crew, or anyone else.

And the group of us three 20-somethings was rounded out by Alex from Spain, who’d been living in Berlin and the German part of Switzerland for the past five years, and had been traveling through East and Southern Africa for over a month.  When we met on Ibo, we spent the first ten minutes struggling to communicate in Portañol – him speaking Spanish and me speaking Portuguese.  It wasn’t until I heard him and Whitney talking that I realized he spoke English.  (“Why didn’t you tell me???”)

We have him and Boris to thank for our island-hopping adventures – Whitney and I both probably would have been content to wander around Ibo for a week, looking at the crumbling colonial buildings and watching Tanzanian TV at the local restaurant with chickens running around at our feet.

Speaking of Portañol, meeting Alex and Whitney marked the beginning of a week of adventures in language.  Between Alex’s Spanish, my Portuguese, Whitney’s Spanish from three months in Ecuador,  and Boris’ Spanish from once falling in love with a Guatemalan girl, communication with boat captains, campground owners and the like was a team effort.  Add to that the fact that people on the islands speak even less Portuguese than in Mabote, it sometimes took two layers of translation between Spanish, Portuguese and the local language.

The fifth member of our group was Anders, a friend of Boris’ who met up with us a day late on the island of Matemo.  He’s a a doctor from Sweden, a little older than Boris, and just as much trouble.  They met years ago on a boat in Indonesia, and since then have met up many times on four continents.  Listening to Anders interrupt Boris’ stories – about wooing women, fending off sharks, or being turned away from checkpoints with machine guns – to say he wasn’t telling it quite right, it was clear that these two were a dynamic duo that will only slow down when they die.  More than once throughout the week, Alex declared, “Those guys are my heroes!”

So that was the motley crew.

After we chartered a boat to Matemo from Ibo, we spent four days camping on the beach, snorkeling, swimming, taking a day trip to mostly-uninhabited Rolas Island, and crashing Matemo’s 5-star resort for cold beers.  They agreed to let us buy beers if we drank them quickly and then left – lest their chic European guests wonder who let in the dirty backpackers.  Seeing a speedo-clad Italian using wifi by the pool kind of burst my bubble of feeling like we were totally off the grid at the edge of the world.

Anyway, I had a great time and all, but I was really happy to get back to the mainland yesterday.  Sailing on a dhow from island to island through turquoise waters may sound romantic, and it is... for the first hour.  But when you’re baking in the sun, getting seasick, having to pee, and just wanting to be there already, it’s not fun to keep seeing your destination get oh-so-close... only to have the dhow drop sail and reverse course again, taking you farther away. 

I still don’t understand why sailing back and forth in a zigzag pattern is necessary, but I think it had to do with the current or the wind going the wrong way, or both. We tried to understand the sailing strategy, but every time we asked a question of the captain or his small crew, we got the same answer: “Não há problema” (“no problem”).

It didn’t matter what the question was, the answer was always the same: “No problem.”  It became a running joke among us, someone asking, “Where are we going?” or, “What’s for dinner?” and someone else answering, “No problem.”  I took it to mean, “You people ask too many questions, and God only knows when we’ll get there.”

Yesterday especially, going from Matemo to Pangane (here), was pretty harrowing.  The water was particularly choppy, and I suddenly became very aware of how delapidated this old wooden boat with the tattered sail was, and noticed with alarm that there were only five life jackets for seven people.  I plotted in my head how if we needed to, we could empty out two large jerry cans and use them as flotation devices.

Several times, a big wave washed into the boat, requiring more than the usual amount of bailing.  We realized we had nothing the right size to bail with, so someone finally broke open a round ceramic buoy (which Alex had been referring to as “Wil-son!!!” from Cast Away) and used a broken piece to help bail out water.  That worked for a while, but after a couple more of those waves hit there was so much water in the boat that they just started using a bucket.

Through it all, the captain and crew never seemed alarmed, though I’m not sure whether that was an indication that there was no real danger, or whether it was just in keeping with the Mozambican temperament (i.e. so laid back that they never seem alarmed about anything... even when there’s plenty to be alarmed about).

But they thought it was pretty funny when, after one such wave, I hurriedly donned a life jacket and started trying to help bail with the piece of the broken ceramic buoy.  I wasn’t accomplishing very much, stumbling and falling all over the place as the boat pitched and rolled, but they seemed amused by my efforts.  I was not amused, turning to Whitney and saying, at the edge of panic, “I am not dying on this *** ocean!!”

But after several hours of zigzagging, we did finally arrive in Pangane.  Well, almost.  The tide had started to go out so we had to wade through thigh-deep, jellyfish-infested water to get to the shore.  The captain and crew thought we were being silly muzungus to be afraid of jellyfish.  “No problem,” they assured us.  Thankfully there wasn’t a problem, and – however unnerving – we made it intact and un-stung (probably due to the fact that their tentacles were short).

But at least now it all makes for a good story, and maybe one day, when I’m Boris’ age, I’ll be telling it to some 20-something backpackers.  I can only hope.

We left Boris and Anders lounging on Matemo, and Whitney and Alex left early this morning for their next stop.  So now I’m enjoying the solitude and down time, and looking forward to another good night’s sleep in a real bed.

That was my first adventure of many, I hope, on this long journey home from Mozambique.

Até logo,

Julie

P.S. I posted a few photos from Ibo, Matemo and Rolas Islands (and watery points in between) here.