30/04/10

Anna came to Inharrime last night and spent the night here, and then the two of us and Ann headed up to Vilanculos after my classes. We had just walked out to the road to wait for a chapa when a truck pulled over and asked if we needed a ride. He drives a produce truck from Maputo to Beira (the capital of Sofala province, the province to the north of Inhambane) twice a week, so he actually drives right by my house four times per week! He was extremely nice and friendly without being creepy or inappropriate (rare in Mozambican men) and though we talked for most of the ride, he never once asked if we were married, if we wanted Mozambican boyfriends, etc. It was nice to make a new friend and he is bringing Ann a bag of beans when he passes back through this week because he can get them so much cheaper. The only drawback was that his truck REALLY struggled on the uphills and didn’t go much faster the rest of the time. For the first couple hours I thought the speedometer was in miles-per-hour because surely we couldn’t be averaging only 45 kilometers-per-hour…but we were. At one point we had to go off the road to drive around another semi that had broken down in the middle of the highway. The dirt shoulder is incredibly steep and it felt as if our overloaded truck might just tip over. One of those moments when you think, okay I might die right now and there’s not too much I can do about it. And I threw up in my mouth. Thankfully the truck never tipped.
In Vilanculos we got to see many friends who we hadn’t seen since leaving Namaacha after training. People came down all the way Zambezia, Nampula, Sofala, and Manica provinces! It was so wonderful to see everyone again and to hear all of the stories.