02/05/10

Headed home today after a short but wonderful weekend. A man pulled over headed to Maputo so Zach asked if we could get a ride with him. He said that we would have to pay 500 Meticais each which is just absurd so we told him no and thought to ourselves that he was just another guy trying to rip us off because we are white. He asked how much we wanted to pay and Zach said “well actually we were hoping to find a boléia (ride).” The man said, “oh okay, in that case you can come.” For free. I am not quite sure how that thought process worked. When we were getting in, another man pointed to a rice sack and said “be careful.” Then the bag started to move and four 3” claws poked out! Not knowing the word for turtle in Portuguese, it took us a few minutes to figure out exactly what it was. The whole ride it kept clawing Anna every few minutes and a few times it finagled its huge head (like the size of a Nalgene) out of a hole in the sack so someone would have to take their flip-flop off and whack it a few times to get it to go back into the bag.
Finally starting to cool off here. I got my blanket out of storage this week and walking to eat breakfast at 5:45am it’s actually quite chilly. Of course it’s always amusing to see the Mozambicans wearing wool caps and gloves and winter jackets anytime the weather dips below 70ºF.