The trip from HELL

Tuesday this week was my trip back from Maputo. Now let me just explain how it is. I'm not ranting here, I just want everyone to understand what pure hell traveling is in this country. Nothing enjoyable about it like the train journeys of America and Europe.

Anyway, I was getting nervous the night before and had taken my lariam. So, between the anxiousness from the drug and the anxiety of the travel, I didn't get much sleep. 2 hours to be exact. I wasn't in a good mood when I set out. :O( My taxi was an hour late. I had two big bags to get on the bus and new one or both of them would be on my lap. Luckily only one of them was on my lap. The bus had a trailer, so I put the less valuable bag into the back. All of this took place at 8 o'clock in the morning. I paid my 300 meticais to go where I needed to go, took out my book and just tried to read. I fell asleep FAST! But that didn't last long because this music started blaring. Africa is a very LOUD continent. Most of the speakers are broken because the buses here are old school buses from Japan which does not make for pleasant listening. We get going an hour after I get on the bus. Time is not an issue in Africa. But I've learned not to get too excited because this usually just means we will be going to one of the two gas stations that are on the road out of town. Whichever one has the least amount of people and the most amount of gas I guess! So after all of this we finally get going at 9:30 in the morning.

Now I've never experienced blatant physical harassment in my life, until I moved to Africa. Normally I just shrug it off, but after two hours of sleep, I couldn't take it. There were these two Mozambican girls were fondling me through the seat back. I just started swatting them away and trying to make sure they didn't steal anything from me. I fell asleep. I get woken up by a poke poke poke into the ribs. That's never nice so I was not very pleased waking up. They wanted me to by them some cans of soda. It was annoying!!! I asked them for the money and they started laughing hysterically and announced to the bus that the mulungo (white man) didn't have 30 meticais, $1.25 to buy them soda. I turned up the volume on my iPod and tried to ignore them.

Little time had passed before we got stopped at a road block. I noticed that it wasn't the regular transport police who were doing the stopping - it was the army. My heart jumped a little bit because I realized that if they wanted to mess with me, they could. I pulled out my passport and hoped for the best. I got it. Everyone was ordered out of the bus, bags and persons were searched... except for me. It was wonderful yet aggravating at the same time. Why am I any different!?!?!?!

I get back on the bus and promptly fall asleep. Not less than 30 minutes later the freaks behind me wake me up my massaging my head and SNIFFING MY HAIR! I flipped. (Honestly though, I was stanky! Didn't have time to shower that morning) I'm so sick of this "do white people do/have...." Besides being woken up by having your hair pulled is not pleasant. So I grabbed her hair and pulled. IT CAME OFF IN MY HAND!!! I yelled at her and raised a ruckus. I think I got my point across and promptly went back to sleep undisturbed for the rest of my trip.

I think I scared the bus....