Hitchhiking, Portuguese Church Ladies and Rabbit Meat: 24 Hours in Mozambique [Part 2]

Part 2

As we sat on the shoulder of the asphalt, munching on our usual and surprisingly satisfying prisoner’s diet of bread and chlorine-neutralized water (supplemented that day by a few sticky sweet mangoes a fellow stranded and waiting traveler had given us), we alternated trying to flag down the occasional passing car or truck. The longer we waited the more we talked about heading backwards to Pemba in order to catch the usual early morning taxi to Nampula the next day. But nothing was going in the other direction, either, so it was looking more and more like we were stuck at the crossroads for the night. As a last resort we scouted out a nearby guesthouse but held off getting a room until we were absolutely sure we needed it.

After a handful of fruitless attempts to flag down the occasional passing car or truck, a glimmer of hope came when a Kia SUV about the size of a mini-fridge puttered by us with what appeared to be two European women in the front seats. We each leapt up and began violently waving our arms about in our best attempts to get their attention. Sadly, consistent with our luck with transportation on the trip up until then, the little car kept going. We looked at each other in mutual alarm and disbelief and dejectedly sat back down by the roadside, completely beside ourselves that two fellow traveling foreigners would completely ignore us, literally on the side of a road to nowhere (It wasn’t until a bit later, after our frenzy of misguided self-pity subsided, that our thoughts turned more sensitive and curious, wondering what in the world these two little ladies were doing in northern Mozambique all by themselves. More on that later).

This reaction probably doesn’t seem entirely or even partially logical (and, frankly, it isn’t, really) and maybe it seems even wildly tactless and incoherent. Fair enough. But let me take a moment to try to explain—not to justify—our initial outrage at being ignored on the side of the road.

Being a foreigner or, more to the point, white, in Africa has many obvious and distinct benefits to go along with all of the negative attention and hassling we are consistently subject to. One, namely, for better or for worse, is the at-first-completely-disorienting-and-off-putting-but-later-completely-accepted-and-expected privilege of being forced to the front of lines and unwittingly taking precedence for service over others (that is, locals) who clearly had been there first and had been waiting longer. It’s something we haven’t ever gotten comfortable with and as it’s happening it’s something we’re often conscious of and even discussed amongst ourselves, but it’s also something we’ve come to more or less accept and even occasionally (rightly or wrongly; mostly the latter, I imagine) take advantage of for the sake of common sense convenience. It seems the longer we are here, the less we think about it and the more frequently we take advantage of these small favors. This means we can get a seat in the front of a minibus when there are already people sitting there. It means we can move to the front of the line at the well or borehole or tap to get water where there might be a dozen women and kids already lined up. This kind of stuff happens everywhere, every day. And to clarify further, we are generally offered these small social allowances by those same people we are displacing in line rather than outright requesting them for ourselves. It was this rather unsettling and conditioned privilege that caused us such alarm and dismay when these two ex-pat ladies passed by us when we clearly needed a ride (completely disregarding the fact that there were about 12 or 15 Mozambicans waiting with us who, with equal urgency and likely fewer resources, needed to get somewhere along the same road we were traveling). This is all very difficult to justify and explain, of course; especially to those who haven’t been here. These not-so-subtle and eventually conditioned privileges aren’t a set of circumstances or social hierarchies that are in any way fair—it’s just one of those strange and disconcerting facts of life here that you simultaneously get used to but remain conscious of and uncomfortable with.

Well, the looks of horror on our faces must have registered with the ladies in the passing Kia as a few minutes later they came down the other side of the road and waved us over to talk with them. It was immediately apparent that neither of them spoke a word of English. But through a brilliant combination of broken Spanish, wild hand gestures and some indiscriminate Portuguese numbers, Amy was able to elicit a vague nod and hand wave from the driver that we interpreted (not necessarily correctly) as an invitation to get in the car with them.