Mo Mesticals, Mo Problems: Tales of a Mozambican Adventure

Mo mesticals, mo problems: Tales of a Mozambican Adventure

In retrospect, it was my own fault…..

A and C had announced their intention to do a Christmas/New Years Mozambique holiday back in September, and I was honored to be on the invite list. Along with Rainbow Brite, there were four of us, and this is, in my humble opinion, absolutely the only number of humans with which to travel. Two and you might get sick of each other, 3 you’re likely to have an odd one out, any more than 4 and there’s no chance of fitting in one room together, and finding enough bus seats is a trauma. This way we can split into twos and everyone is nearly always happy.

I told them I wouldn’t be able to really help with the planning of the vacation (what with all my copious amounts of internet time I simply cannot imagine why not) but promised to be thrilled with whatever they came up with so long as it encompassed a beach (and seafood). I let them know I trusted them completely and told them to tell me when and where to show up and who to cut a check to.

In retrospect the bright side of the needle stick incident (and let’s all remember, there’s a positive side to every situation, and I’m thankful that this one did not end in a positive HIV status!!!) is that I was able to have one of the most productive days in the last 6 months of my life while in Gabs- I got my passport visa for Mozambique (as well as my replacement mouth guard… what what!) and many other errands done. The visa business is the only reason I had any idea when we were even going to be in another country. I heard about the name of the village location I would be staying at from another PCV completely as there was another group going to Mozambique during that time and she had spoken with Rainbow Brite about our itinerary.

I’ve discovered that this is the type of traveler I occasionally like to be (Although I tend to be the tour guide Nazi with my mom and sister. I have also been blessed to find enough friends who like planning trips in my life that many times I’ve been able to just exist in a state of ignorance and show up with a smile and some sunscreen). I seem to like the element of surprise on my holidays. Just showing up and doing whatever I’m told to do and I’ve been generally thrilled with the results. This might sound lazy of me (and of that fact you would be correct…) but every ship can only have so many captains and I always thought I looked better in the Skipper’s stripes!

So what is the point of confessing my deepest darkest travel secrets to the world via this blog, besides of course providing you all with cheap laughs(?) I felt I must give you some background from which to understand what occurred on the Mozambican holiday.

So off I go, eager for my adventure to a country I knew nothing about. In my defense I did buy a travel magazine with the word Mozambique in big bold type on the cover- the pictures were beautiful- but I didn’t really get around to opening the free with purchase map or reading any of the articles until we were well into the country. I certainly wasn’t as prepared as A, who had compiled a list of useful phrases in Portuguese such as, “Am I being arrested?” and “Are you married?” She also took it upon herself to figure out the details of the currency exchange rates, and I have to tell you, by the time we crossed customs in Mozambique and were withdrawing what ended up being the fourth currency we were operating in from the cash machine (the first three were Pula, Rand, and American dollars) we were having a challenge finding the correct coins and bills to buy a drink. They had started mentioning the Mozambican money back at a bar in Jo-Burg, (I’m of the belief that they may have specifically waited for me to be a bit off my game…) and they quickly informed me (before hiding their grins behind their hands) that the currency of Mozambique was the “mestical.”

Yup that rhymes with exactly the male body part that is immediately brought to mind when the word is said out loud. (Pause for you to try it. Ok. Moving on). They let this little joke ride just long enough for actual learning to occur in my brain, and I was stuck with it for vacation. When I couldn’t manage to make my brain evoke mestical, I usually came up with metrical, madrigal, or magical. None, of course, which are correct. (the currency of Mozambique is called the meticais, although for your next Mozambican holiday I recommend using mestical for it’s hilarity inducing properties. Hell, use it for the currency for your next vacation to Mexico. It’s funny!) It became a running joke through the holiday, bartering with the locals in mesticals, (we undoubtedly got screwed left and right on this one), making bets and dares in increments of 100,000 mesticals, (the exchange rate is 24 to 1 with the American dollar) and making up rap song titles using our new beloved currency.

Now why where would we get the idea what we could use mesticals as the theme for song titles you ask? Well this stems from the incident in which I may have accidentally cut my head on the gate that stood between me and the beach at the backpackers we were staying at. It was a tricky descent to navigate when sober, in the daylight when it was dry, so it was completely understandable that the rainy and wet, dark, slightly intoxicated conditions I was operating under I may have slipped. The cut was tiny, but the next morning I made the joke that I had given myself a “Drunken Gash.” Now if this isn’t the perfect name for a band I’m not sure what is!?! I may have even seen them on MTV during my formative years of hair bands and sad country music!

The band idea was provoked by the entertainment at the bar and restaurant we stopped by after our amazing New Year’s Eve dinner (I swear I may have died and gone to heaven. Fancy, nice food, Edith Piaf on the stereo, my girls around me, it was amazing!!!) was this South African chick with fluorescent Barbie inspired extensions in her hair singing covers to bad 80’s songs to a karaoke machine. She even had wardrobe changes. We speculated that she might belong on a cruise ship somewhere and immediately decided to form our own band of us doing covers of her covers. The marketing joke for this particular idea was to give away a free bottle of Arby’s Horsy Sauce to anyone who bought a copy of our first CD, which would be recorded live at TGI Fridays. I have to say that one of the most entertaining parts of this vacation was to be able to make wildly ridiculous jokes that didn’t have to be explained through a ten minute back story. With Americans you all just “get it”. I didn’t realize how much I had missed that.

With all this hilarity, you might wonder if anything went wrong on this vacation. Up to now it sounds like all laughs sunshine. Of course we had some mishaps. There were some episodes that would have made the cut for National Lampoons African Vacation. It rained over half the time we were on holiday, but of course generally not while it would have had a lovely cooling effect while we were on any of our massively long and miserable bus rides. And the rain I speak of was not a little Botswana style afternoon shower to cool us down and then allow us back out to frolic on the beaches. It was torrential, occasionally painful or blinding downpours. There was no hot water at the backpackers we spent most of our time in Vilanculous at, or really even solid walls to provide much mosquito protection. We were all sandy, cold and wet for much of the time, as was nearly all of our stuff. I’ll let you imagine how all that began to smell. Don’t forget to add in the saltwater. The buses we had to take left us with people literally sitting in our laps and on our armrests, with small children vomiting from the sickness that comes from standing in the aisle and a straight diet of Fanta, bread and candy that appears to be a common meal on Mozambican 12 hour bus rides with loud Portuguese music and bad pop songs in English playing the entire way. There was literally so little leg room that at one point I woke up and couldn’t feel my feet. With A’s help I maneuvered them up only to be confronted by cankles and feet that resembled hooves. A and C accidentally left things at one of the hostels. My wallet was MIA for a while. Rainbow Brite got what was probably third degree sunburns on the backs of her thighs, and I cut my foot pretty badly (narrowly missing my tat… that one’s gonna leave a scar) during our snorkeling boat adventure (probably needed stitches but what can you do?). How did we make it through the vacation without killing each other you ask? How can this possibly go down in my memory as one of the most fun vacations ever?

Throughout the course of the trip we came up with a brilliant concept I plan on implementing on every trip I ever take again (consider yourself warned). This is known as the blame game. We decided early on in the trip that we would each take a day in rotation to be held responsible for anything we might be pissed off about, or that went wrong. It had the effect of making everything into a joke and preventing a lot of tension or frustration from building. An excerpt below.

Me: “Rainbow Brite, why did you make it rain on our vacation today? And why am I hungover? Why did you make me cut my foot on that coral?”

RB: “I don’t know, Jen, but I certainly am sorry. All these things certainly are my fault. I’ll work to make the sun shine tomorrow. Preferably out your ass. And that cut will certainly always remind you of what a fun time we’ve had in the rain on this vacation, won’t it?”

Cue the hysterical laughing from all involved parties and witnesses. And a great time was had by all….