As we drive out of the bustling capitol city of Gaborone (on the luxurious bus known as the Intercape –similar to a Greyhound- or as it will remain in my memory, “the magic bus”) on our way to Jo-burg for the first leg of our vacation, my Peace Corps buddies and I paused to reflect. We had all immediately upon meeting expunged some of what I’ve come to think of as typical “toxicity” complaining about our sites and cultural struggles. We were ready for a break. Don’t get me wrong, the people I was with love villages the way I love Seronga. If anyone talked a word of smack about any of the places we’ve come to think of as home (other than ourselves of course) we’d go rounds like the “Sharks and Jets”. Existing in a foreign culture is a constant internal fugue of a battle between indignation, acceptance, understanding, and striving for change. My friend A captured it exactly when she stated “I’m just ready to be confused and slightly offended by a new and different African culture and language for a while.” She certainly called that one.
As we crossed the border (and event marked by the introduction of a young man whom shall remain known as the Mexican Harry Potter- he turns up later in the story) for the first time in nearly 9 months to South Africa, vacation officially began. It was weird to retrace our steps from when we first got here and the people we were then. As we got nearer to Jo-Burg we noticed McDonalds and other cosmopolitan establishments, and the kind of scenery that totally resembles places in Arizona or California. You could have totally told me that’s where we were and I might have believed you. These things hadn’t struck us the first time through when we were green off the plane. Back then I was busy waxing poetic about the red dust of Africa (which incidentally is not very common in my new home of Botswana… The dirt is nearly white in Gumare but that is as close to interesting dirt as I’ve come across here…) to notice that the “villages” we were driving through would now strike me as incredibly suburban…
To be in a major (sorry Gabs) capitol city for the first time in nearly a year was incredibly weird. It was like stepping out of the life I know I live for some strange alternate reality. Not to say that I didn’t enjoy it, it was way easier to do than I thought it would be. We had great food in Joburg, I got my hair cut (I cannot tell you how exciting that was!! A shoulder massage by the shampoo lady! I was nearly brought to tears by the “almost Aveda” scent permeating the air…) and we were again on our way. It was strange to be able to speak English and realize everyone would automatically understand you, and I found my Setswinglish phrases hard to completely let go of. It got worse the farther from home we got.
The next day we again took another magic bus (with movies and air conditioning! What!?!) and as we crossed the border to Mozambique what began as a light drizzle became a deluge of rain shortly before we reached Maputo. The bus broke down (only for about an hour and a half) and in flooded streets we arrived at our backpackers. A was now coming a bit out of her Bendryl induced coma to enjoy the festivities. We could find nothing but soggy burgers and Fanta to compliment the diet of Fanta and bread that we had been enjoying all day to this point, but it was all still in good fun. The landscape had come to be increasingly tropical and beautiful and more closely resembling my preconceived notions of what I thought Africa would look like pre-PC. It was the next morning that we entered the hell bus portion of our journey.
The next leg of our journey is a bit traumatizing to recount and large gaps have likely been struck from the record that is my memory, but I’ll just say that it put my 14 hour overnight Semanta Santa Barcelona to Seville trip to shame. The highlights were being able to buy some fresh fruit that must be some member of the mango family from the aisle of the bus and then having standing-while-the-bus-is-moving-over-horrifying-flooded-out-ruts contests with A once the crowd thinned out after our bus change during the last four hour leg of the trip. I now realize that I am completely amiss in calling the 10.5 hour bus trip from Maun to Gabs the “dehydration express.” I have now realized that the Vilanculous Express is the rightful holder of that title as there is only 1 sanctioned potty break, and no hoof and mouth gates or ID check points on which to relieve oneself. What a new and fun learning experience!
It was once we arrived in Vilanculous that the translation fun for which this blog entry is titled occurred. The national language of Mozambique is Portuguese. Which I’ve heard resembles Spanish. When I was in Costa Rica for two weeks in high school I was dreaming in Spanish so I figured this would be easy! In my own mind I am still very able to pick up languages quite easily (with of course the exclusion of the Bantu family of languages which I’ve determined I have little hope of ever understanding). I was ready for this challenge.
Walking along the streets of Vilanculous a strange thing happened. I started hearing select words in Setswana. What??!! This is impossible. I determined that this must be the local tribal language. (Which I have since been told does not resemble Setswana in the slightest.) Oh boy. I was hearing this craziness and continuously reconfirming with C- she was having none of my delusion. Upon arriving in Moz, we would often try to speak English, or when the locals appeared to be confused by that, we would go for the ever less likely option of Setswana. In an irony befitting of these conditions I could not evoke the Spanish that danced like sugarplums in my head for all of pre service training and prohibited my intake of Setswana. By the end of the trip I was speaking a very poor combination of Setswana, English, Ubonicks and Spanish complimented by sweeping gestures that might resemble Central Asian Sign Language.
At one point I decided to delve completely into “cultural integration” and thought it would be entertaining to learn to say “two headless hammerheaded sharks” in the local language. (We had found them on the beach. It made sense at the time.) We were lucky in several instances to have with us our very own Mexicans, (it seems we again ran into our buddy the Mexican Harry Potter from Jo-Burg and adopted him and his sister into our motley crew) who in addition to providing us the idea of “an hour without a Mexican” (a play on the title of a film a few years back with great concept and crap execution) that we constantly made fun of… and to translate the Portuguese (and our crazy American demands- sometimes in places where you can walk into an actual restaurant you get crazy expectations in your head about what might be a reasonable request-no onions?) with their Spanish skillz.
One thing I unexpectedly, (but happily) got a vacation from was my status as “strange white rich person”. One of the first things I noticed as we disembarked in Vilanculous was that no one was staring at us because we are white. It took me a while to settle back into the policy of not greeting every single person that walked by me. When the Mozambicans did approach us, it was rarely to beg, more often it was to sell us something they had made or caught. I noticed that they addressed us with the inclusive salutation of “my sister” rather than the exclusive “Lekgowa” which emphasizes our differences. Several times we asked people to help us find something, which in Botswana (for me at least) can often end with a held out hand, whereas in Mozambique it was just a wave and a smile. Now I realize the grass is always greener, but I left feeling distinctly jealous of Peace Corps Vilanculous.
All this aside, I am happy to be back in Seronga. People greeted me in my village like I had been gone for decades, and immediately set about teaching me how to say in “compliments of the New Year” in Setswana. At least there are always some places one knows what to expect…
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