The Beach Boys

On the day i left Monkey Bay it seemed everyone else did too. There was a funeral in nearby Cape McClear and the ute i climbed into was so full there was no room to hold on. As we turned the corners even the locals squealed. 20km later, i stepped off petrified.

While walking down the beach that afternoon, friendly locals abound, and i wasn't far before a group of boys invited me to the bar for a beer. Malawi, like the rest of Africa, has great local beers. They have a Carlsberg Brewery, and another brand, Kuche Kuche, whose slogan once translated reads "Drink till sunrise", promoting its relatively low alcohol levels. The locals tend to drink Chibuku, which come packaged in a milk carton, and needs to be shaken before each sip to carbonate it. Its rather foul....

Soon the boys from Monkey bay turned up at the bar. Leylo, who had walked me to the hostel a few days early in Monkey Bay, lived in Cape McClear and invited me for dinner. I agreed, and later on we walked though the markets buying fish, tomatoes and onions. Leylo sang and danced for all the store owners, obviously well known in his little town. We dropped the food off at his Mum's house, who would prepare it.
"Does she mind cooking for everyone?" I asked, testing Leylo's realisation of the male dominated society.
"No" he says, "Ive been away, she missed me and wants to cook for me". I laughed.
"Yeah, my Mum would do the same" I said.

As our food was cooking we headed to another bar a few blocks down. It seemed that halfway through this beer Leylo lost it, he was completely drunk within a few minutes. He slammed his beer down on the concrete table, it broke and spilt all over my lap.
"Leylo, go home, and have some dinner, and im going back to my lodge." I said "Thanks for your invite tonight, ill see you tomorrow." I wandered off down the road with Leylo following me the whole way, asking why and denying he'd spilt anything. The next day he meet me in the street and sheepishly apologized for his behaviour.

In the mornings in Cape McClear i made an effort to walk to the markets and buy my breakfast from one of the local stalls, rather than the hostel. One morning two young girls about 8 years old meet me on the path to the market about a kilometre down the beach.
"Excuse me Mother, where are you going" they asked. (Mother and sister are used as generic terms for a woman). I told them to the markets.
"Would you mind if we held your hand while you walked?" They said. They both took a hand each and laughed and giggled, whispering in the local language the whole way. When i reached the markets both girls hugged my knees and ran off smiling. "Thank you!" They called.

The lodge i was staying at was a sleepy small hostel with a few volunteers who worked in the local area, and a couple of lazy travellers. I meet an older German man who was travelling with his son, around my age. He had been to Africa before, in the 70's he and a friend had tried to drive from Germany to Cape Town in a Volkswagen Beetle. They had come through Morocco and across West Africa. At the border of Zaire (now DRC) they waited for weeks for visas. Eventually they had to give up and they sold the car. A week later there passports arrived, visas included, but it was too late and instead they had to return home.
"All my life i have dreamt of the shores of Lake Malawi" laughed the man as he looked across to the islands in the bay. "I have three children. I promised all of them that when they graduate school i will take each of them to Africa." His son was trip number two, Malawi and Zambia. His eldest daughter had requested a trip to Madagascar a few years earlier, his youngest was planning an ambitious rafting trip down the Niger River in a few years time.

I took lunch in a local restaurant. The restaurants in Malawi are lovely. The walls are painted with colourful messages welcoming all, and the waiter will fuss over your tea like they have never made it before. The menu is mostly the same, fish with rice or Nysima, a stiff maize porridge you eat with your hands (known in other countries of Africa as Ugali or Posho). But i began to suspect they never even brought the ingredients for your meal until you ordered. It often took two hours to prepare a meal despite the fact the restaurant was empty. When it finally arrived it didn't disappointed, and i was glad nobody was around to see me struggle without cutlery.

Back at the hostel, i ran into the German man again. He told me of his wonderful afternoon. He told me at first he didn't move for hours, but then he moved to a chair on the beach. Now he's thinking of moving to the hammock. He may even order a coffee. I agreed it was just to easy to do nothing except enjoy the peaceful surroundings. "A few more days and I might not bother getting up, just sleep all day" I said. He smiled and said he’s looking forward to that point.

Despite Cape McClear's reputation as a backpacker hangout where you can do nothing for weeks on end, after a few days the village boys drove me crazy and i couldn't wait to leave. It wasn't their attempts to sell me jewellery or batiks, in the end it was simply there continual presence. Most of them knew my name, either being the boys i had met at the pub or friends who had been introduced to me since. They would catch me on the street, follow me around, desperate for anything to fill in there days with. Despite there unfaultable English, i couldn't hold a conversation with them, we had nothing in common to talk about past a basic introduction. I could ask them what they planned for the day but the answer was always nothing.


They would quiz me for information about Australia, something which i gave out reluctantly and sparingly. They asked me what jobs my family had, and when i told them my sister was studying, she wants to make movies, they responded saying how great my country must be, you can do anything you want. After that i couldn't really explain that it wasn't that simple, that Tess was never guaranteed to do that, and she might never make any money from it, but explaining to boys who had the choice of being a fisherman, or not being a fisherman it didn't translate. There was of course a lot of truth to what they were saying, we were given more opportunities. I found it hard work.

It was such a shame. All the beach boys i met were all intelligent, well spoken, young, fit boys with nothing to do all day. Universities and corporate companies would have snapped up the same class of young men born in Australia within weeks of graduating. In Malawi, despite how well they had done at school, if they had no one to sponsor them, they would never attend university and jobs don’t exist. Charismatic salesmen, alongside the suitcase full of useless jewellery they sold me, the guys scrounged a living from tourists, running guided walks, taking trips in friends fishing boats, and getting there sisters to cook traditional dinner on the beach for groups. Unfortunately, the number of beach boys outnumbered the tourists, even in the warmer months.

I crawled through the bush to the most remote point of the Cape, careful no one was following me, desperate for some quiet time on the beach alone. There were no lodge or huts in the area, just bush and the occasional fisherman passing by, calling out and flexing their muscles for my camera. It didn't take long, it was about 20 minutes before i was joined by Frankson and a couple of his mates who politely bought up the chance to have a look at there jewellery. Other Australians had told Frankson that we couldn't take seeds home, which most of the jewellery contained, so he had made some pieces out of wire that were Australian customs safe!

After his friends left Frankson stay behind to chat. I told him that it bothered me that there were so many beach boys, and that there businesses seemed unsustainable given the few tourists around. He said in the past there was more, and of course fewer boys selling their goods, but these days it was hard, and he maybe only sold a few pieces a week.

After leaving school Frankson had attended University in Blantye, supported by his brother, a fisherman, who had look after him since his parents died when he was young. When his brother lost his job, Frankson had no money to continue his education and had to come home.
"When i came here i had nothing to do, and all the time i had to ask my brother for money. He showed me how to make jewellery, and now when i sell some i can take money back for his children."

I asked about women our age. He said this is a problem in Malawi too. When women mature they often have children very quickly and stop their education. But, I said, if they see that the men their age cant get jobs then getting married and having children may seem about the nicest path available. No, said Frankson, Malawi has gender equality, the problem is we are not educated. Education is the key, i have none and therefore i must sell jewellery.

To me it seemed despite what education they had, Malawi’s future creative class were wasting away in the sun on the shores of the lake. As a land locked country in Africa, the barriers to establishing industries in the country were high, and therefore not many past the American Tobacco Company had bothered. I thought about it for a long time, but I didn't come up with any answers.

I left the Cape early the next morning, the first bus out, with no time to say goodbye.

West of the border

From Nampula it was all travel, straight to Malawi. The next morning we headed to the train station at 4am, an hour before departure, thinking we were early and could get good seats. Not so, all the first and second classes were sold out, and when we boarded third, it appeared everyone else had spent the night reserving their benches. We stood up until after midday, battling with the constant movement up and down the isles of hawkers and trading their goods, squeezing past us politely every minute of the morning.

It was on this train from Nampula to Cuamba that i finally put together the reasons for the 50kgs of rice that i had seen piled on to the buses, and the touts at the station who sell soap and toothbrushes and babies shoes and everything else i had never imagined i would need on a long bus or train journey. It infuriated me to see the rice take up so much room when you could always buy it at the journey's end. It saddened me that touts tried to make money on things that i thought a traveler would never need - do some market research!

Eventually everything clicked. In every town in Africa, even the smallest couple of houses on a highway, there is a little stall or two to sell soap and rice and biscuits, a little supermarket in a town to small to have one. The Banana cream biscuit company does not swing past once a week to restock any supplies. African logistics is the network of friends and cousins, coming and going between towns and cities, dropping of a few supplies each time as they can. On the journey home, if a guy can palm off a few bars of soap he simply intends to sell anyway, its just a bonus really. Big Mumma's sit back and fill there baskets with cut price soap and baby shoes galore!

Cuamba proved to be our worst hotel yet. Jon moved the bed and a flurry of cockroaches spread across the wall. It was the only hotel in town. It was a $1.50 Aussie. We put the bed back and decided to head out for dinner. By the time we got back, the 13 hour train journey had taken its toll and we didn't have to try hard not to think about the bugs for long before we were asleep.
Another early start saw us at the bus station before the sun rose. We were a few hours from the border post listed in the guidebook, but the chappas were heading to a post further north. We went with them.

As we got closer to Malawi things had already begun to change. The border town had muffins, which we delighted in scoffing down after weeks of no variety, eating only the same soft white bread loaves baked in every town in Mozambique.

The border was still 10kms away and the only mode of transport for the journey was ones own legs or arranging a lift with a local on a bicycle. About 20 bicycles gather around with offers and we selected our drivers carefully. Jon liked the hat worn by one guy, i went with the guy who opened the coke bottle i was struggling with. It was a hot day, the guys panted and puffed as we sat on the back of the bikes up the hill. I felt fat and heavy, but it was so much fun!

From the other side of the border, some differences were immediately apparent. In Mozambique, women wear colour wraps of material, only a few kilometres away everyone wore tailored clothing. Malawi had road signs. It was freezing. None of these changes however reminded me that people here could speak English. I nearly died when on the bus i yelled out "Hey Jon, check out the look on the face of the kid next to me!", and everyone else checked it out too...

Across the border in Malawi's commercial capital of Blantye we were overcome with available menu selections. Weeks of bread and bananas were washed away, and Jon and i spent the next few days feeding on any vegetables we could find, fantastic Indiana food, and relishing in the availability of milk and beef. I'd seen the cows grazing as we crossed the border, they stood shaking in the wake of our hunger eyes...

It was Blantye were Jon and i would part. He headed back to South Africa on what i told him was a 20 hour bus trip, but later heard from others was more like 40. Blantye was cold and wet, in contrast to everything we'd traveled in Mozambique and as i walked an unknown distance down the highway to the bus stop i tried not to panic at the though of taking on African travel for the first time alone.

Surprisingly it was easier than it ever had been. The crew of the bus that eventually picked me up, fussed over a woman traveling by herself. My and my luggage got the fount seat. They drove around and found the bus i needed to be on, carrying my bag over, and showing me to my seat. As they left they all shoke my hand and wished me the safest journey.

I was headed to Cape McClear, on the shores of Lake Malawi, where Malawi's cold weather was rumored to mysteriously improve in the shore areas. In years gone by, Cape McClear was a prime hang out spot for the weary traveler, the Goa of Africa. In the last few years the travelers had moved further north, and i was warned before i left about the persistent beach boys who were desperate to sell there handmade necklaces to the last few tourists in the area.

But from this point my bus ride went downhill. I was squashed in the backseat next to a massive woman who dictated that my shoulders could fit neither in front nor behind her. The back door of the van was tied down with string leaving a large gap which quickly filled with exhaust fumes, suffocating me, plunging my head into a horrific well of pain.

A few hours later the bus emptied out at a junction and i was told i had to change buses. The driver lead me over, as i wobbled wearily from the fumes. " No, no, no" i protested as we walked towards the ute. I knew what was next, bumpy roads, standing up in the overcrowded tray and hanging on for dear life. I propped myself up against the cab with my head between my legs and refused to sit up despite the impressive number of passengers squeezed on the back.

Out in the fresh air i began to feel better. I slowly lifted my head. The man standing straddled across my curled up body didn't speak English, but could see i was not a happy camper. He waved his hands around and clapped like you'd do to an angry baby. I had to crack a smile, it only encouraged him.

I felt better and got up to see some of the scenery is missed with my head between my knees. Green plains, with a multitude of different trees, the flat topped greenery from lion king and the haunting old baobabs scattered like ghosts. The nearby mountains were speckled with gold from and purple highlights, the further afield ones were blue, until they blurred with the sky. At every town we stopped the children yelled "Mzungu, Mzungu!" sometimes in panic, sometimes teasing, but mostly to get me to wave.

When the truck stopped in Monkey bay, about 30kms from Cape McClear but id had enough for the day. Three guys walked me to the nearby hostel, across the old airfield, past the soccer field, ("Oh no" they consoled "We cried for your country last night, losing to Italy. Next time, Next time"), and through the local village.

Through the gates of the hostel i took my first spectacular view of Lake Mawali. The overcast clouds and windy day meant that the water had turned wild and sea like. The nearby mountains were visible, but across the large expanse of water you could only see the suggestions of the ranges that stretched along the edge. I love gloomy water, rough on a windy day, but i couldn't wait to see the lake under a perfect sunset, were she could show her true appeal.

The guys, Rolf, Issac and Leylo who had walked me to the hostel sat down to chat, which was nice as i was the only guest. "Ah Aussie eh?" said Leylo. "G'day mate, howz ya goin'" he said almost perfectly. They knew a lot about geography. Previously i was describing my home as the large island in the pacific, near, well nothing really. These guys knew it well, Sydney and Melbourne, even Tasmania.

Leylo taught me boaw, a Malawian wooden board game which i beat him at first go. They showed me there necklaces that they made. I bought a few knowing full well i would never get seeds past Australian customs.

Later on a family turned up at the hostel. Ceildhe (pronounced kay-lee), was my age, she was on holiday with her parents, but had been living in Bolivia for the past year, the country she had completed high school in, as her parents, Renee and Brad, worked there as teachers. These days, Renee and Brad, (both girls called them by their first names which i found disturbing modern) and her younger sister lived in Khartoum, in Sudan. They had been there for a year and it was fascinating to hear about both countries in contrast to their native Canada.

Later in the evening, Leylo and Peter took me to the village to show me how they brewed German Coffee, the local alcohol. I'd been warned, but couldn't resist giving it a try. This stuff has the fire of a thousand suns. It went down like a vodka shot, but what felt like 40 times harder, every time you closed your mouth, the taste hung around and you winced again. It washes down my throat like i imagined anthrax would. After one, i stuck to beer.

The guys tried out all there Aussie phrases on me. "What does 'hard yakka' mean?" they asked. They'd seen it on some shorts. I apologized on behalf of my country for whichever tourist was walking around Malawi in stubbies.

The next day i joined Renee, Brad and the girls for a walk up one of the nearby hills. We didn't have any idea if the track we were walking along was the right one, but as all of Malawi is beautiful it didn't seem to matter. Walking was great, from the top of the hill you could see Cape McClear. It had been really hard to do much in Africa, in the towns the locals taunt the crazy tourists who walk with no destination.
"Hey Mzungu!" They yell "Where are you going?"
"Nowhere, just walking" i smiled back.
"Of course" they say, "Just killing ants hey?"

After a delicious lunch in a local cafe we headed back to camp. The next day i bid farewell to my friends, they were heading up the lake by boat, i would head to Cape McClear, and hope to meet them again further north.

Hitchin' a ride

Jon and I sat alone in the campground at 4am waiting for our taxi.
"Russell called one for us last night, didn't he?" I asked Jon.
"There was taxi driver at the bar, he sorted it out with him". Great i thought, of course a driver at the bar wouldn't be here at 4am to pick us up. We started walking.

The bus left the station in Pemba 5 kms away. We walked with our bags hoping to find a taxi. Jon drove me crazy, stopping at every hotel we passed and asking them if they could call us a taxi. In Mozambique, there is no taxi company to call, only indivduals with cars. If you know one, you can call them, but nobody wants to wake up there friends at 4am. Eventally the casino had their own taxi driver on site, and took us to a bus top on the outskirts of town. We missed our bus, but apparently there would be more later on.

Hours later, after walking into the main bus station, we were still yet to find anything. Everyone told us there was no hope for today, a bus would leave Pemba tommorow at 5am. We sat in a cafe trying to figure out our options.

Both of us wanted out of Pemba. After the trouble at the campsite, the cops and the South Africans who would soon know we dobbed them in, i was keen to leave. We could stay in town tonight instead of the campsite, and be on the bus tommorow.

It was a really hot day, we had been up for hours and were struggling with our bags. We couldn't find the hotel the guidebook recommended. We walked past the airline office, and agreed we were so desperate we would ask. They told us no flights left today, but further down the road a tourist office told us otherwise. In Africa, its best to check it out for yourself, and headed out to the airport.

We waited on the steps of the airport. The few poeple around told us there was a flight today at 2pm, we could buy tickets when the terminal opened at 12, about 2 hours away.

As we waited on the steps at the airport, a tiny figure was running up the long driveway frantically waving. The kid was maybe ten, and had an obvious disability, he didn't speak any langangue, but he had an enormous smile, and nodded furiously and continually.

We couldn't deduce his name, but the kid hung out with us for the next two hours, dancing around, pointing and nodding at nothing, and drawing pictures with all the pens and paper we could find in our bags for him to play with. He was wearing a small childs shirt, which covered his sholders, but none of this chest or stomach and was tied up with string. Jon gave him one of his t-shirts from his bag, it hung down to his knees, past his shorts, but the kid was delighted, and kept sticking hs chest out and marching around proudly in his new get-up.

When the terminal finally opened, Jon went inside to sort out tickets while i waited with our bags. He was gone a long time, so I stuck my head in to see what the problem was.
"No flights" he said "But were devising a little plan."

He emmerged a little later with a hand written note in Portugues for the guy at the frount desk.
It read (approixmatley):
"Good Morning. Can we please ask you a favour. We want to go to Nampula, and we are hoping to find a lift there, or to a town along the way. We speak no Portugues. Thank you very much."
We were to take this note to a traffic cop station about a kilometre down the road.

Jon and i laughed at the crazy plan as we strolled down the highway, it was alreay around 1 pm. Not many travellers go through Northern Mozambique and we had often discussed whether despite this being our first backpacking experience if we could consider ourselves hardcore. "If we make it to Nampula tonight Courtney, i think we pass" declared Jon.

We reached the traffic cop station and presented our note wearing our biggest and friendliest smiles. They laughed, passed it around, and lead us around the back. Someone got two chairs and set them up for us to wait in the shade. Traffic cops in Mozambique are stationed on highways. They pull over vehicles, ask the driver a few questions, prod whatever luggage the car is carrying and then wave the driver on. These guys were happy to do our hitching for us!!

Eventually they convinced a bus to take us to the turnoff to Nampula, about 50 kms down the road. It was abut 2pm when we arrived.
“Wave down every car” warned the driver. “Its late”.

I looked around the junction and envisaged the night here. There were no hotels, but there was a local village and it would be easy to find a patch of ground in a hut to lay our sleeping bags for a few dollars. There were a few other waiting for lifts at the same place. I found a kid to buy some bread from and made a sandwich.

A ute turned up in about an hour, with a few people and some equipment in the back. They squished our bags between a spare engine and some women, got us to sit on the back and hold on to an unattached ladder. I closed my eyes and freaked out as we swerved all over the pothole covered road. The truck stopped about 100 kms further down the road.

We couldn’t believe how well we were doing so late in the day. After our total misery at our lack of options at breakfast and we were now on the way to Nampula. But at the bus stop out of town a large number of people were waiting for a ride. But Jon and I were confident, sticking or thumb out enthusiastically at every ride, ignoring the temptation to curl up under a tree after every rejection.

Eventually a couple of guys stopped. They were going to Nampula, but you could tell they didn’t want to take us much. The two of them drove a four seater ute, but the cab was full of shellfish which they didn’t want to move around. The back tray was full of coal.
“No problem” we told them “We’ll sit on coal! Were really keen to get to Nampula!!”

The ride was awesome. Wind in our hair, looking back at the mountains, forests and rivers of Mozambique dancing past us. We pulled into Nampula after dark, freezing, our clothes and skin blackened from the coal. Sitting at the window of our hotel, eating baked bean sandwiches, Jon and I had to laugh, and think that we might, in fact, almost be hardcore.

Bruts with Utes

Our first morning in Pemba I woke up to the sound of Jon throwing up on the floor of our dorm. I didn't really worry about him, we had got into Pemba late in the afternoon the day before, after yet another full day of traveling, delayed buses, heat and dust and I figured it was just exhaustion. He groaned, went back to sleep and I went to explore Pemba.

Pemba, to be honest, was not what I had expected. The water was bluer than blue, the sand was whiter than white and the massive hotels and resorts were an ugly eyesore and very different from every other beach in Mozambique. You could take amazing photos of the sand and palm trees, but you had to be careful to cut out the million dollar yacht sailing past. I walked into town, and around the market place, looking though hundreds of designs of the beautiful capulannas, long sheets of material worn by the Mozambican women as skirts and used to carry their babies. The vegetables in the market consisted entirely of potatoes, onions, and garlic. The only food with any vitamins was baby porridge, and id already been eating that for breakfast.

Back at the bar a group of guys invited us over for a beer. Yoga, a long haired slurring Afrikaner, had lived in Mozambique for a few years and worked on a fish farm just outside of Pemba. His brother Verna moved to up a month ago and was trying to get work as a chef on the cruise boats that took tourists around the Islands. Sitting with them were two guys from Angola who worked on the farm as well, but they mostly spoke amongst themselves. Yoga and Verna invited us back to there place. Yoga had a little shack on Wimbe beach; we could get some fish and have a braai. We happily agreed.

From the very beginning of our conversation you could tell that most of these guys’ stories were pretty tall. We talked about sharks, and first they told us stories of local sightings. Later we heard stories of there close encounters with them in the water, attacks on their boats, and finally Yoga retold a gripping, emotional and heroic story of the time he rescued his mate from being mauled by a sharking, in the final moments (after the guy had lost one of his limbs) he stabbed the animal with a knife he happened to have with him (while out swimming). It made the 8 o’clock news and his Mum saw it while she was waiting at home wondering where he was. It was an amazing performance, Verna nodding along with him, adding a few more details. It was . . . . Unbelievable.

But you don’t point out this stuff to friendly people you've just met, so we let it go a little. But the night went on. These guys served with the foreign legion, owned half the property in town, had just sold one of the Islands for 19 million, spoke seven languages, knew the Governor of the region personally, and his son, and the Minister for Defense. All these people had awarded them some sort of criminal immunity which meant despite the fact that they lived in front of the police station they could smoke as much weed as they wanted. They had owned restaurants, suffered heroin addictions, spent time in jail, but were now millionaires through intelligent property investment. Hell, next month the very patio we were sitting on would be a three story resort with a dive centre and jet skis.

The stories and plans went on, we heard them again, and then for the third time, each time more dramatic and exaggerated. Some of it could have been true, but I didn't want to know what. The stories got worse. Yoga said that last year he had run over a woman and her child in his car and paid the authorities 2 million meticash ($100 Australian dollars) to make the charges go away. From what we had heard of corruption in Mozambique this could have been viable. I felt a little sick. There wasn't much air left under the pile of bullshit they were burying us in.

Jon looked exhausted so I hinted at the possibility of going back. The guys offered to take us. Ok, said Jon. I tried to catch Jon's eye to tell him I wanted to walk back. The guys were drunk and stoned, the roads were bad and dark and we were only a 20 min walk away. Jon was tired and didn't want to. I kept looking at him. I wouldn’t have walked back in the dark by myself, Mozambique was safe, but through an isolated part of the beach then you’re pushing your luck.

When the guys went inside to get jackets and car keys I put on my most serious face and told Jon I wanted to walk back. Jon would probably hate to think that I could tell him what to do, but I knew that I would get my way, he was to much of a gentleman to tell me otherwise if I was really serious, and I was. We walked backed. The two guys were annoyed, and drove to the campsite to go to the bar anyway.

As we walked into the camp ground we could see the guys at the bar. Jon walked straight to the dorm to avoid the guys, I headed for the bathrooms. When I got back Jon was going through his bag. "Check all your stuff" he said, "When I came in here the security guard was in here". We were the only people staying in the dorm.
"Did you ask him what he was doing" I asked.
"He said switching on the light, but he was at the back of the room. My knife is gone." Jon had a fancy Leatherman knife which he loved. We'd used it hundreds of times in past few weeks for everything from hacking open cans of baked bens, to making sandwiches on the bus. He left and went to repot what had happened to the bartender. Russell, the Aussie owner of the campsite wasn’t around. He was staying at one of the Islands nearby but would be back in the morning.

About 10 mins later the bartender, Jon, the security guard, and two Afrikaners were in our dorm room. The security guard spoke only Portuguese and was explaining to the bartender what he had been doing in our room. The Afrikaner guys were yelling, promising Jon that they would get the knife back, accusing the security guard and threatening him. "I’m not saying he did it" Jon kept saying, "I just want to know what he was doing in our room"

Apparently the story the guy was telling was quite contradictory, and he didn't really have a reason for being in the room. Yoga was getting really mad. He yelled and hit the guy with a stick. I yelled then, I was so angry. I knew when they walked in these guys would cause trouble. Yoga hit him again, and then a third time. I screamed more. I wanted to hit Yoga, but after each time he hit him, I yelled, and he put the stick down and I thought he would stop. When everyone finally calmed down and agreed to wait for Russell, and they left back for the bar. A local girl at the bar heard what had happened taunted Yoga with "Hit him like you hit your girlfriend??" Had I hit Yoga he probably would have slapped me back and I wouldn't have been ready for that.

Jon spoke to Russell in the morning. While we were at the beach the police came to talk to the security guard and Russell. They took the guard to see a Sangoma (local medicine woman) to see if they could get the knife back. They would brew him a drink and perform a bit of a curse, apparently it often worked in these situations, stolen goods returned, as the local people are so superstitious.

Russell asked us to meet him at the police station the next day at 2pm. They wanted us all to be there to get the story straight. Jon needed a police report for his insurance anyway. Russell told us best not to mention the South Africans and the guy being hit. Why, I though, it happened, we saw it.

We waited outside the station for about 10 mins and Russell hadn't showed so we went inside. We spoke to an officer who spoke almost no English, who asked us to wait in a small office. Officers passed in and out of the room, not doing much. One guy was typing on an ancient typewriter, the only piece of office equipment in the area. Every cop had a machine gun, and they were swinging them around like restless children carrying school backpacks. The guy sitting behind the desk swinging in his chair pulled a pistol put of his pocket and slammed it on the table, the barrel starting straight down at us. I jumped and thought it would have been safer to wait outside.

Russell never showed and about half an hour later the guys lead us upstairs to meet the constable. He spoke no English, but had a translator. Mostly these two spoke among themselves and eventually the translator turned to speak to us. He dictated to us what they believe to have been the events, the knife was discovered missing and Jon had accused and hit the security guard. It took all my effort not to say anything, I wanted to scream out. I was so scared. The translator was not at all fluent in English, just an officer who spoke a little. I was panicking, and trying to imagine what id do if my friend was arrested in Northern Mozambique by a non speaking police force.

Jon was very calm and explained what had happened very slowly and clearly, that it hadn't been him who hit the guy. We told them about the South Africans. They guys had mentioned there last names the night before, so I wrote it out with their address, the house across the street from the station. Luckily the police accepted this story.

Then we came to the police report. They had no idea what a police report was. We told them Jon needed a letter that said the knife had been stolen. The knife is lost, they said. Stolen, I corrected, you don’t go to the police if you have lost something, you only go if you have had something stolen, the report must say stolen. But we can’t tell for sure it was stolen, they argued. Yes, we said, but you only have to say that we came here and said it was stolen. We reported it stolen. They thought we were crazy, but took a lot of strange details of Jon and agreed to write the report.

A few hours later we came back to collect the report. On thin tipex socked paper was a typed declaration in Portuguese. They tried to stamp it to make it official, but the inkpad was out of ink, so they had just made a black smear on it instead. Jon shook his head "Look at this, I could have written this myself, no insurance company will accept this" he said. He inspected it further. "Actually, come to think of it, it’s unlikely anyone could come across a typewriter like that anymore anyway" he laughed. We asked the guys for the phone number of the police station if there were any problems, but the station didn't have a phone.

I was so angry with Russell when we got back to the bar. It would have been good if he had been there since he spoke Portuguese. He was also the first to speak to the police and as he had left out the assault part, which they would have learned later from the security guard anyway, it simply made us look more suspicious. We told him this and he agreed nonchalantly and bought us a beer. I felt 10 beers would have been more appropriate. I expected more from an Aussie.