Mmm! Mmmm! Zambezi chicken
The swelling in my eye was down the next morning, and I felt like a new person. I got so many things accomplished – picked up some additional meds I was supposed to take, got all my laundry washed (professionally, one of the ways I occassionally treat myself), and picked up my passport, amongst other things. I spent the rest of the day with Allan (the Scottish guy at the hostel); we ate a green coconut, drove up to the beach area, and had a nice dinner (but no seafood – I have been avoiding prawns like the plague). That night Raul and I went out to hear more live music.
We had another good night on the town on Saturday night. We saw some live jazz (some band from Paris) in a beautiful space at the train station (which was designed by Eiffel, or maybe one of his students). After that, we headed to a place called the 6th Level, which we could see above from the street. We walked down some outdoor red candle-lit corridor, pressed the button and waited. The elevator door opened and we were greeted by a little Mozambican midget, who turned us away since some of us were in sandals and/or shorts. The rest of the night we sat tucked away at a little bar on the main strip.
I had now been in Maputo for another almost 2 weeks, almost 3 weeks in total. While I really did like the city (spending most days strolling around, popping into a cafe for nice coffee), it was time to go. Nearly a month in Mozambique (again, a place I never even intended on visiting) and I had only been 2 places. On Monday morning I headed out, back up north to a town called Vilankulo.
I was told that it wasn’t possible to get to Vilankulo in one day, but when I showed up at the bus terminal (after getting ripped off by a cab driver, probably being my own fault), they informed me that the bus was running, so I bought a ticket. The scheduled leave time was 6:30am (necessitating a very early wake-up), but we were finally off by 7. This was a normal bus, not quite Greyhound quality, more school-bus quality, but it was not crowded, which was an important factor. I slept most of the way, and it was a long, long way. I arrived in Vilankulo about 8:30pm, well after dark.
Vilankulo is perhaps not the best place to arrive after dark. There’s no indication of where to go (no signs), and hardly any electricity to be found outside the city center. This makes for very dark streets, which are all made of sand, and are a challange to walk along in the dark with a backpack on. As I got off the bus, a ton of kids hanging out mobbed me; then a man came up to me, and shoo’d all the kids away (sometimes threatening to call the cops on them, and I couldn’t imagine it was all that serious). He offered to walk me to some accomodation. But who’s this guy? I thought to myself, so I asked a lady sitting around. She gave me the ok, and off we went.
This was John, who runs dhow trips (dhows are little arab sailing boats) out to the Bazaruto Archipelago, a strip of islands off the coast that attract a lot of tourists for diving, snorkling, etc. Basically, they were the reason I was there. John brought me to one of the cheap hostels (pretty much securing my business for a dhow trip, but it was a nice assurance to arrive safely). As I walked up, the few who were standing around looked at me in a bit of awe. “Where did you come from?” Maputo. “Wow! That’s a long trip!” Yep… Joel (a guy from Oregon) showed me around the grounds. I dropped my stuff, showered, and went for a beer – the perfect remedy for a long day’s traveling.
The next few days I spent just walking around the little village of Vilankulo. While Vilankulo is a tourist destination (due to the islands), it’s well mixed into a proper little village. Tofo was more exclusively a tourist destination, with some locals, mostly working to sell things to tourists. Here, people were working, living, doing their thing, while tourists blended in.
As I walked around, little kids always ran up to me, screaming “Hello my sister”, “Hola”, “Good morning,” or something similar. A lot of times they ask for money (”I’m asking for 1000″), but the general rule is not to give it to them since they’ll learn to beg…this really hurts sometimes when you see cute little kids in rags, barefeet, and with bad teeth or some odd malady, and you really can’t, shouldn’t give them money. They’re all pretty funny, though. As soon as you respond back, say hello and ask them how they are, they run away. Some of them talk, but most of them run away; me and the local adults laugh together at this, as I tell them all the children are scared of me in Vilankulo.
It’s really amazing how many people I got to know in town those 2 days just from walking around. One guy was Benny, a younger kid, maybe 20, who was on vacation from studying in Maputo. He invited me to his house, so we walked over to a sandy plot with some straw huts. His brother and friends (all boys) were playing some card game; I tried to pick it up, but they were too fast for me. I did get a kick out of their playing cards, though – each card had a different picture of a white, half-naked woman, the buxom blonde type. This is not the last time I saw cards like this around town…
I met Benny’s mother, who was washing dishes on an outdoor platform/washing and cooking area. She was also starting the fire (a few sticks of wood on the ground) for dinner. She was very nice and welcomed me to her house any time. As it got dark, Benny, his brother Carlitos, and friend Sergio walked me back to my hostel. We met Benny’s father on the way home, who used to be a doctor, “but now he’s too old, so he doesn’t do it anymore”. He’s 45. Benny offered that perhaps his father could look at my eye (the other eye swelled up ever so slightly), but it never got any worse than a slight swelling, so I opted against any more medical treatment.
That night, as I was writing, I was joined by Tino and Santiago, two local brothers, who invited me over for lunch someday. Sounds good. We made plans for Friday, and I also agreed to go to AfroBar (one of the local places in town) with them later that night. On Friday, I sat on the beach until Joel (the guy from Oregon) met me to walk over to Tino’s. Joel finished chef school before coming out to Africa and has lunch at Tino’s house nearly every day, learning how to cook up some mean Mozambican cuisine.
Joel told me they bought a guineafowl for lunch, since news of my potential allergy to shellfish got out. When we arrived, we learned that the bird had not yet arrived to the house. They gave it to some guy to hold and bring back, but they now suspected this guy sold the guineafowl to someone else to pay off one of his many debts in town. “We’re sending out the troops” they said, to go search for the chicken (as they called it). The troops came back with nothing.
After maybe about an hour, the guy, Ermelindo, arrived with the live bird. They just carry these things around by their feet, swinging it around like it was just a plastic bag. We eventually got to killing it. “I’m not killing that bird!” I responded to words of encouragement from the ladies in the kitchen. Instead, Ermelindo stepped up to the plate, but was quickly ousted as contents from his shirt pocket fell on the bird as he leaned over with the knife to slice its neck. I was expecting them to use an axe or something to quickly chop its head off, but no. They made one small slice, and the bird twitched (me too!). Then another slice, and the bird twitched some more…they kept repeating this until the whole head was sliced off. The bird sat there for a while, headless, presumably to let the blood drain out.
After a while they started to pluck it. I left and came back, and they were still plucking the bird. It was now getting way past lunchtime, and the bird still had feathers on it. We were not eating any time soon, and I was getting hungry, so they brought me out a plate of food – fish, and some local dishes (mathapa and something made out of maize meal – I forget what they call it in Mozambique, but its called sadza in Zimbabwe).
We finally ate what was supposed to be lunch around 7:30 at night. They passed around a bowl of water to wash our hands, then they started digging in. I noticed I was the only one fiddling with utensils – “Oh. You guys eat with your hands?” Yeah. “Great. I’ll eat with my hands too, then.” What we had in front of us was called Zambezi chicken – they guineafowl was cooked and then barbequed, brushed with coconut milk. It was accompanied with coconut rice (awesome – just substitue coconut milk for regular water) and salad. Damn! Now that’s some good home cookin’.
Tags: Maputo, Mozambique, Mozambique, Vilankulo, Tag Index
Tania