It is only today, while fighting a losing, caffeine-fueled battle with my body — which is insisting that it’s bedtime or well past, and that I need to stop stuffing it with food at weird hours and walking around and trying to talk Portuguese when it wants to sleep — that I realize that despite all the traveling I’ve done recently, I haven’t been more than 3 hours outside of my time zone since the summer after high school. Long enough to forget what jet-lag feels like, that’s for sure.
I really shouldn’t complain. Actually (and I’m going to jinx it by saying this), I’ve had a run of excellent luck with airplanes recently, and this trip was excruciatingly long but entirely uneventful. I flew to DC on Saturday, spent the night, and left on Sunday morning for Maputo by way of Senegal and South Africa. The only eventful part of the trip was before I got on the plane — when I, in my infinite wisdom, managed to forget my PIN number and deactivate my ATM card about 5 minutes before my flight was due to board. Naturally I did what any mature college graduate would do in that situation: I called my mom. This, of course, is the phone call that every mother loves to receive. "Hi Mom. I’m leaving for Africa in 5 minutes and I don’t have any cash or any way to get some. Okay, well I think I’ll be fine. Probably. Maybe. Okay, I have to go now. Bye."
Luckily it didn’t play out exactly like that. Mom worked the phones like a champ and I got an alternate PIN for my credit card about 30 seconds before they made everyone turn off their cellphones on the plane. And by the time I needed to withdraw cash in Maputo my ATM card was back up and running, so it was all cool. A little bit of panic every now and then makes you feel alive, right?
So like I said, the flight itself was fine, except for the fact that they insisted on turning on all the lights and feeding us every 2-3 hours. It was bizarre, actually: first off, whatever happened to sleep? and second, what time zone could this schedule possibly correspond to?For example, guess what time South African Airways thinks I eat breakfast? Apparently their best guess was approximately 10 pm DC time, 1am Senegal time, and 4am South Africa time, or something along those lines (in all fairness, we had a second mini-breakfast just before we landed in ZA). This probably explains at least part of the jet-lag today: by meal #5 on the plane, my body had pretty much given up.
Enough about the trip. I got to Maputo on Monday afternoon and spent one night at a decent hotel before becoming bored and ditching it for an awesome hostel. Yesterday, which was my first full day here, I just wandered around the city. I’d heard a lot about how dangerous it could be here, but I haven’t felt unsafe. In terms of crime, I doubt Maputo has anything on Sao Paulo or Rio, and surprisingly, I get bothered much less on the street here than I do in many places in Latin America. It’s interesting, too, that there are fewer bars on the windows, less barbed wire, and less security in general than some larger cities I’ve visited.
Which isn’t to say that Maputo’s all roses and perfectly paved streets. It definitely has its problems, and it’s easy to see that the government has to strain to provide even basic services like trash collection in some areas. Sidewalks are erratic — sometimes they’re there, sometimes they have enormous holes where (I assume) people stole the drain covers to use the metal for something or other. And sometimes the sidewalks are flat out gone. I’m not supposed to drink the water, even to brush my teeth. And there are way too many random guys hanging out on sidewalks and street corners (don’t worry, they just hang out, nothing scary) for me to pretend that everyone who needs a job can get one.
It’s obvious from looking at Maputo that Mozambique has come a long, long, long way since it earned the distinction of being the poorest country in the world toward the end of its civil war. I really like the city actually. But it’s hard to know what to expect in Quelimane, which is still the poorest region in the country.
