Mozambique Part 2

At 2:30am our alarm rang…   we dragged our sore butts out of bed trying not to wonder, why are we doing this again? After all this was the vacation we chose to have! But we both agreed that 12 hours on a train couldn’t be any worse than 4 hours in the back of a truck on a bumpy dusty road. So we walked to the train station while it was still dark (we never actually saw Cuamba in the light!) and saw that the line had already formed to buy tickets. We had no idea if there was going to be 2^nd class tickets left (you were supposed to buy them a day in advance, but because we got so delayed we didn’t arrive in time to do that) so we were just hoping. Apparently all the women got to form a separate line and were given priority to buy tickets (probably to ensure that all the women and children get tickets if it sells out…) so I was told to go in that line leaving Josh far back in the men's line...and in my terrible Portuguese asked for two 2^nd class tickets. “No Second class” is what I was told, and my heart sank a little as I wondered if 3^rd class was going to be as bad as people had warned us.. so I bought 2 of those and we then got in the lineup that was apparently the line waiting to get on the train.  

We had no idea what was awaiting us and we discussed that if the conditions were really bad we would just stay here for a couple of nights and wait for 2^nd class to be available.  As it turned out, it wasn’t as bad as we thought (while we were waiting we saw the grain car that had one window and I thought if that was 3^rd class then there was no way we were going!) and we ended up getting a seat and were surrounded by a handful of other expats. I was so thankful that I had brought my yoga mat because the seats were wooden, so I had a bit of a cushion!

The first four hours of the ride were really nice, no one sat beside us so we each had a bit of space and landscape was really interesting. Mozambique is known for its inselbergs, which are large masses of smooth volcanic granite.

Inselbergs that dot the landscape

It was really good to see the true Mozambique as the train would go by and sometimes stop in all these small villages.People (mostly women and children) would sell us everything from mangoes to bread, to fried chicken to onions, to goats.. all through the windows of the train. It was amazing to see all of this flurry of activity happening in such a short time span…people yelling, money exchanging hands, huge sacks of food coming in to the train, and sometimes as the train would start moving again goods would be quickly taken up through the window and money would just be thrown out the window on to the tracks.  It never ceases to amaze me how strong people’s necks are here.. it’s amazing how much weight they can carry on their heads.  Josh and I were also amazed at how it was always consistently the women and children doing the selling, while the men would usually be sitting under a shaded tree somewhere. The gender roles and expectations of children here are pretty intense and it just broke my heart to know that instead of going to school these kids were selling and making money for their family.. this train ride just brought all of these complicated issues to such light and it was hard to just sit there knowing that this was daily life for them..

So as the train rolled on we picked up more and more people and eventually there were now people sitting next to us on these small wooden benches. It was interesting to watch them buy loads of food (onions, mangoes, garlic) at each stop, although they would be constantly leaning over us to get to the window (personal space is about a hundredth of the size as it is in Canada!) and then stuffing everything in every inch of spare leg room possible! Often in these situations I really wish josh and I were small.. because together we make up quite the pair with my long legs and josh’s linebacker width- needless to say the next 8 hours were not comfortable. But I got to know some of the other travelers (met some Japanese people from JICA- the equivalent of our CIDA, who lived in Malawi) and we had some funny exchanges with the Mozambicans beside us. But there were no doors on the bathrooms (which was just a hole in the floor) so I didn’t pee for 12 hours! I wonder what 2nd class would have been like… maybe more room and cushions on the seats, but Josh and I decided that we weren’t going to find out. Although we were glad to have done this once, twice was just going to be too much.. we decided that we were going to look into flying back if we could! So around 6:30pm (after 12.5 hours on the train) we rolled into Nampula, found our hotel and went to eat our first real meal of the day. After being awake since 2:30am, we passed out around 8:30pm knowing that we would have to catch some type of transportation the following day between 7am-10am (the lonely planet guide was not very specific- so we were just going to have to wing it!) to head to Ilha de Mocambique. One more travel day and we would be at the coast! How bad could it be?? TBC…..