6 am – wake up (thank you roosters), take bath, clean room, have tea
8 am – meet Michelle, Shannon, Hannah, Drew and Jon on the main road in Namaacha to walk to the fronteira and catch a chapa to Matolo.
A few minutes after 8 am – get picked up by chapa… drive 3 times through Namaacha looking for other people to go to Matolo and thus fill the chapa to it’s capacity of 19. PS a chapa is a van with 4 rows. In the states, you’d fit 12 adults comfortably. …
9 am – finally leave Namaacha.
10:15 am – arrive at Shoprite. Glorious, glorius shoprite. They have Christmas decorations, they have produce, they have a candy aisle, they have every thing you could ever possibly want. It was complete sensory overload. We literally just walked up and down every aisle. OH. They have cash registers! That’s like, a biggg deal.
11 am – sit down at Mundo’s, a restaurant in the same strip as Shoprite. Once again, completely overwhelmed by the menu. Anything that’s not white rice, bread, or some kind of green mush is a delicacy at this point. After a solid 15 minutes, the only thing we could decide on was that we needed a round of chocolate milkshakes to start. After thoroughly enjoying those – in a comfy booth and with our laptops (Mundo’s has wireless. It’s pretty much why we chose that place)- we moved on to the real meal… Pizza and diet coke. So there we sat. For 3 hours. Happy as little clams. We facebooked and blogged and skyped. We ate and ate and ate. Loving every overly-full second of it.
2:15 – leave Mundo’s… thinking we just have a quick hour-long ride in a chapa back to Namaacha. But oh how wrong we were….
Around the time it starts raining, we realize that chapas do not run from Matolo to Namaacha. Fabulous. So after asking around and standing on at least 5 different corners, we decide that we need to find a bus to Boane and then we can catch a chapa from there. Easy, right? False. So false. One bus to Boane pulls up. It’s about the size of a school bus or a city bus, and it is literally packed with people. PACKED. There really isn’t a better way to say it. It is body to body. So full that the door won’t shut. There are 4 people on the steps hanging on to the outside of the bus. So, we let it pass. There is no way we’re fitting 6 more people on there.
Twenty minutes later, another bus comes. This time, we were determined. If we were going to get on that bus, we needed to be serious about it. We had to knock a few people out of the way to get on. Basically, Drew got on first and pulled all of the girls into the bus while Jon pushed from the other side. I have never been in a tighter space. Ever. So crowded you couldn’t move your arms. Really, you couldn’t move at all. About a half and hour later – we finally made it to Boane. Just a quick chapa ride from Namaacha….not.
Once we found a place to pick up a Namaacha-bound chapa –we had a longgg wait. And the thing is, there are no maps. There are no scheduled times for departure. People just go and wait. So there we are, just waiting. An hour or so later, in rolls a chapa. We take off in a dead sprint – determined to get on. Successful and uncomfortable, all six of us make it in. Minor bumps and bruises, a few elbows to the neck/face area. But we’re all there. Now we’re waiting inside the chapa. We wait and wait. And the driver disappears. The sliding door has come unhinged and the door won’t shut. Half of the passengers abandon the chapa for an open back truck…. This is not the little chapa that could.
Having accepted that we need another option – and repeatedly trying to get ahold of a training manager for back-up – we seriously consider getting in the back of a pick up truck. Luckily, our better judgment won the battle and we decided to wait for anther chapa. Finally – by some miracle – a Namaacha bound chapa pulls up. We jump in and away we go!
Lots of bonding. Lots of pride. We ended up stress eating most of the goodies we bought at ShopRite en route. But. We made it! Walking through Bairro A needed a serious double fist pump. Plus, the entire ordeal was totally worth it….
Shout out to the Boane 6! After all, “T.I.A” …….. This is Africa.
Only you would be able to find Christmas decorations and Diet Coke in the middle of Africa! It sounds like you are having a great time!! And you're getting ridiculously tan...haha. Love and Miss you!!!
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