Hitchhiking, Portuguese Church Ladies and Rabbit Meat: 24 Hours in Mozambique [Part 3]

Part 3

Now, at this point, after having been in Mozambique for a week or so, our understanding of Portuguese was limited to greetings, basic bargaining, directions, and standard Lonely Planet-provided phrases. Even with this impressive linguistic arsenal, we were pretty miserable. It seemed that up until that point we had been lucky to run into someone with a modest grasp of English (less modest, at least, than our facility with Portuguese) at just the right time; or, a mix of Amy’s Spanish and my Kiswahili got us by. Luckily, before we left Uganda some friends had given us an English-Portuguese dictionary (without, however, a corresponding Portuguese-English portion, which figures into our plot later on) to help us muddle through the language and the country.

So the initial 15 or 20 minutes in the car was spent just trying to make sense of what was going on, considering we had no idea where we were going or who we were with. Amy and I each took turns alternating between frantically flipping through our dictionary and politely smiling and nodding our heads at what we thought were the appropriate gaps in conversation or when one of the two women would look back at us and smile with eyebrows raised in what we assumed was a request for some kind of affirmation. We managed (I think) to introduce ourselves and mention that we were Americans and just traveling in Mozambique and could speak little-to-no Portuguese (as if that needed any further clarification). We also told them that we were trying to get to Nampula and subsequently asked where they were going. In response, we mostly got some giggling, finger wagging, shaking of heads, and what sounded like a lot of doubtful-sounding Portuguese exclamations. We didn’t need to dig through our dictionary to figure out that we probably weren’t going to Nampula that day. What we did gather during that car ride, however, was 1) they were Portuguese missionaries; 2) they were returning from a day trip to Pemba where they picked up some groceries and checked email; 3) they were, importantly, driving in the right direction; and, 4) they were very, very cute.

We struggled along these same occasionally-amusing, occasionally-frustrating and always-exhausting lines of communication for a lot longer than we expected. Neither of us knew what really was happening. From time to time we would look at each other in the back seat and silently mouth mutual misunderstanding and confusion. At best I think we both hoped to get dropped off at a reasonable guesthouse along the main road; at worst they’d drop us off somewhere and we’d just have to hitchhike the rest of the way. After an hour and a half or more we pulled off the main road in the town of Chiure and drove up to a large, western-style house. We both grabbed our bags and got out, thinking we’d made it to a guesthouse or hotel. Immediately after stepping out of the car the driver tsk-tsked us and motioned for us to put our bags back in the car. Meanwhile, a third lady comes out of the home and gives our two escorts hugs and kisses. Up until now, because of being in the car, neither of us had been able to properly size up our new friends. It wasn’t until this third, new friend unexpectedly hugged me that I first noticed how remarkably tiny each of these women was. I don’t think any of them were over five feet tall. They were so small! They were like animated versions of those oversized stuffed animals you can win at the state fair. And they smiled and talked constantly and they loved giving hugs. They were our very own life-sized Portuguese church lady care bears.

Following a brief conversation and subsequent farewell amongst the three of them, we four got back in the car and continued a few more kilometers down the main road, eventually crossing the river Rio Lurio. Soon afterwards, we again turned off and approached another western-style one-floored house situated next to a Catholic church. As one of them went to open the metal gate to the compound the other motioned for us to get our bags and get out. In typical fashion Amy and I looked at each other and shrugged and followed our instructions, happy to reach some kind of destination for the day.

After and hour and a half in the car Amy and I had attained a sort of calm amidst everything that was happening all around us. Despite not being able to communicate and not really knowing where we’d be that night we both gave up trying to control a situation that was obviously so uncontrollable and unpredictable. This sense of calm was very quickly dislodged once we arrived at the house as our two hosts suddenly descended into a flurry of activity. One drove the car to the back while the other escorted us inside. Soon we found ourselves alone in the main sitting room of the house uncomfortably doing nothing as one of the women prepared our bedroom. The other soon entered the house from the rear and immediately offered us some fresh mango juice before disappearing again without a word. No sooner after we were invited to put our bags inside our freshly arranged bedroom did she sneak out the back door of the house. Meanwhile, the other came back to tell us we could shower if we we’d like and informed us that her friend had gone out back to cook dinner. We politely asked what we were having, mostly just trying to make use of the few words we knew. Our hostess told us that we’d be eating “coelho” (pronounced KWAY-loh) and made an ominous cutting motion with her hand across her throat and pointed to the back of the house. We were instantly fascinated and also vaguely horrified. Apparently the other woman had gone out back to kill a “coelho”, our as-yet-undefined main dish. It didn’t help our morbid curiosity that we were subtly but still suspiciously being prevented from going into the back of the house where our “coelho” was being prepared. We asked what “coelho” was and our hostess put her fingers up to the sides of her head and started making indistinct squeaking noises. At least we knew for certain this time it wasn’t Portuguese. We guessed bat, mouse, squirrel, hyrax (it had been a long day up until then – somehow we lost the logical connection between the animal we were trying to guess and the fact that it was also our dinner. Of course our hosts wouldn’t feed us bat or squirrel or hyrax for dinner. Or would they?). I finally got nosy and started looking through their bookshelf to see if any help in our quest for “coelho” might be found (this whole time I kept thinking of Paulo Coelho, the author of The Alchemist). On the bookshelf I found a Portuguese-Italian dictionary, a Portuguese-French dictionary, a Portuguese-Kiswahili dictionary, and a Portuguese-Makua dictionary, but, naturally, no Portuguese-English dictionary. Curiosity still overwhelmed us but I think we started to worry a little. What the hell we were going to be eating for dinner?