Hello everyone! I hope that all of our American readers had a wonderful holiday, and that our readers from elsewhere are doing well too. Today, we have decided to share a story, rather than a travel tip or destination plan. As we shared here, Jay runs river canoe safaris as a business, and this story is about the time when I took over for a few (eventful) weeks while he was in Zimbabwe.
A recent drone photo of the canoes in the river, taken by Madi (@madisonjeffery), which shows a bit of the surrounding bush where this story takes place.
Jay keeps his canoes at the source of the Govuro River, 30 kilometers from where we live in Mozambique. This story takes place just a few short months after I first arrived in Mozambique, nearly 5 years ago. He asked me to look after the business for him for a few weeks during a business trip and I was clearly ill suited to this job, because not two days into my watch, I got a call from his head guide, Pascal:
“Eh, there is a problem…” he began.
I sighed. It seems that there is often “a problem,” which can be anything from a request for 100 meticais (the local currency, which lately sits at around 60 mts to 1USD) to a case of malaria to theft.
“What is it?”
“One of the canoes, it was stolen.”
I hesitated. For some reason, in my visualizations of ‘things which can go wrong while I’m in charge,’ I had not imagined this.
“What is the best plan? Is Dercio there?” I asked. Dercio was another of Jay’s employees, and it was his job to look after the canoes and paddle the guests and clients down the river.
“Yes, Dercio is looking. I will tell you if something happens,” Pascal replied.
I hung up and wondered if I should text Jay right then or wait for an update. I decided to wait.
A few hours later, I got another call.
“Hello? Dercio found the canoe. A madala told him where.” ‘Madala’ means ‘elderly person’ in Xitswa, the local language. There are a few words, such as madala, which are used often enough that I recognize them even though I don’t speak Xitswa. My main communication with Pascal is a mix of English and Portuguese. Back then, my Portuguese was rudimentary at best, and Pascals’ English, while much better than my Portuguese, was not fluent. We have since both improved linguistically by leaps and bounds, but for the sake of the story, I will keep our dialogue close to how it was those years ago - our conversations tended towards the basic.
“Is it still at the river? Does he know who stole it?”
“Yes, still at river.”
“Ok. Tomorrow, we will go to get it, ok? Amanhã.”
“Ok, yes, amanhã. We go 6am.”
“Ok, 6am. See you tomorrow.”
“Ok.”
So, the next morning Nelson, our neighbor and a taxi driver, came to retrieve me, Pascal, and Dercio at 6am and we drove to the river. Just before the turnoff from the main road to the dirt track leading to the river, we stopped at a little village to pick up the madala. Before getting out, I asked Pascal about the compensau for finding the canoe. In Mozambique, there is always, always a compensau – compensation for whatever job – or grievance, as the case may be – has been done. We had put out a reward for 500 mts for anyone who could find the canoe, and I was wondering how much the madala would ask for; I thought it unlikely he would settle for 500 mts.
Sure enough, “he will ask for 5,000 mts,” Pascal told me. “Tell him, your boss said only 500. Ok?”
I nodded agreement.
We all got out of the van. The madala, Pascal, Dercio and Nelson started talking fast in a mix of Portuguese and Xitswa. I stood by and nodded along, trying to look like I was following the conversation; I was supposed to be in charge of the business, and was attempting to appear at least slightly competent in that role. Pascal translated:
“The man who found it is by the bridge.”
This seemed to me to be a very short statement to cover the 5 straight minutes of discussion that had occurred, but I felt that now was not the time to argue over translational accuracy. Besides, I trusted Pascal, Jay’s right hand man.
We piled back into the car, drove to the bridge, then over it and past it. There, we met a small man, very obviously drunk and swaying slightly. He was dressed in tattered black clothes, so worn they were almost rags, and smelled, underneath the alcohol fumes, as if he hadn’t washed in a long time. Despite the cloying heat and humidity of the tropical summer day, a black woolen beanie was perched upon his head at a wilting angle. He looked at me with squinted eyes and gave a vague wave of his hand directing me to follow him before disappearing into the bush. I looked uncertainly at Pascal.
This is where I began to fully grasp the absurdity of the situation, and perhaps my own folly for allowing myself to be put into it. Here I was, the only non-Mozambican, the only one who did not speak the local language or much Portuguese, and the only woman, in a thicket of ilala palms (Hyphaene coriacea, these shrubby palms are used to make palm wine in the bush), about to weave and duck my way through the dense bush after a strange little drunk man in search of a stolen canoe. Nobody else knew where I was. I began to question the wisdom of this mission. I stared at Pascal, my face clearly showing my hesitation. He just nodded.
“Follow,” he said.
So, I followed. Pascal, Dercio, Nelson and the madala came behind me in a strange and unlikely procession – the foreigner, the taxi driver, the old man, and the canoe guides. We followed the drunk man through the bush, tramping down palm leaves and tall grass, weaving between trees, ducking under thorny scrub. We walked for about twenty minutes, then came to a huge palm bush. Underneath this bush was an imprint in the grass, clearly canoe shaped, clearly new, and clearly empty. The drunk man gazed at it, making a show of scratching his head and looking around in pantomimed confusion.
“Ahhh, ahhh,” he said, looking at me and pointing to the place.
There was a brief flurry of Xitswa. Pascal turned to me.
“It was here this morning. Now gone,” he said. I struggled not to point out sharply that this was glaringly obvious, even to me. It seemed that Pascal wanted to say something else but was reluctant to do so in front of the others.
With no other option, we trudged back to the car, then drove to check on the other canoes, which Jay kept further upriver. Pascal motioned me aside and told me quietly that he was pretty sure this drunk man knew where the canoe was and that it had been moved in an effort to get more of a reward for its second ‘discovery.’ I agreed that this seemed likely. We debated what to do, and finally decided that we would give the thief and the others involved the rest of the day to provide either the canoe or information regarding the canoe and, if this proved impossible, we would file a police report. That settled, we returned home.
Our plan must have worked, because the next morning came another call:
“They have found the thief. We must go to Pembara police station amanhã, 7am.” Pascal’s voice was chipper.
“You are sure this time? The canoe is there?”
“Yes, for sure. Dercio has seen it.”
I was skeptical, but said, “Ok, let’s go. Tomorrow.”
The next morning, off we headed off to the police station in Pembara. The station is made of corrugated tin and is very small, set in the middle of a sandy plot off the tar road. A single, rather decrepit Mozambique flag waved feebly outside atop a thin pole and, a few feet back from the station, some logs were laid out as benches in a clearing under a tree. There we sat, waiting for the police to meet with us. We waited. And waited. And waited. Finally, two policemen came out, one who I assumed was the chief of police – big, fat, smiley, and in uniform – and another younger man, very thin, carrying a police baton and an ancient-looking AK-47. They spoke to Pascal, then got in the car. We all crowded in as well and drove back to the little village. There we picked up the madala again and another man, who apparently is the man who first found the thief – though I was getting a little confused as to why, if this man had found the thief, we had followed the drunk man the other day (this question was never answered) – and drove back to the river. Once again, I followed a man through the brush, this time half along a path. Our procession was flanked by the police, carrying their gun and police batons. We weaved through brush, ducked under branches, stepped over tall grass, and finally found a group of thorn bushes. The man pointed. In these bushes was the canoe.
Pascal, Dercio, the young policeman, and the old man heaved, dragged, pushed, and carried the canoe, which is a heavy Canadian style canoe made of fiberglass, back through the brush and to the car. There was much sweating and puffing. The fat policeman walked sedately behind, casually swinging his police baton. Once back at the van, they opened the back and, ridiculously, tried to stuff the canoe inside. It was at least twice the length of the van, and clearly wouldn’t fit. The decision was made to try pulling it behind the van. We had no rope, but this was of no concern to anyone except for me. Everyone looked to the madala, who grabbed a Msasa tree branch (Brachystegia spiciformis, also called ‘zebra wood’, this is a very common tree around here) about the width of my forearm, yanked it off the tree, and then seemed to split it in half with his bare hands with no effort at all. As I looked on in astonishment, he stripped each half of its bark, shook the long bark strips out, and then tied them between the canoe and the back of the van. He had made some rope.
That will never hold, these canoes are too heavy, I thought. I shouldn’t have been skeptical – the bark rope dragged the canoe all the way back to the launching point on the river, and was still so strong that we had to cut it off with a knife. The canoe restored, we headed back to the police station. We resumed our places on the logs and waited (and waited and waited) once again while the two policemen went inside. After a half hour or so, they came out and motioned us to follow them back in. There, we sat in a row in small plastic chairs across from the head policeman while he filed a handwritten report on what had happened, asking Pascal occasionally for confirmation of details. Once that was done, they all looked at me and pointed to the next room over.
“The thief is there.”
I glanced towards the room and nodded, unsure of what they wanted me to do about it. “Ok,” I said finally into the growing silence.
“Go look,” said the police chief, pointing with a long finger.
I stared at him, aghast. Go look? What was I supposed to do with the thief, being once again, quite aside from the fact that I knew nothing of the Mozambican justice system, the only one who doesn’t speak Portuguese and the only woman? I felt out of place and out of my depth, and was left once more wondering how on earth I had come to this situation. But, I was supposed to be the temporary boss. So, I went to look. There was a man there, sitting on the dirt floor, one hand dangling in a handcuff clasped to the bar above his head, staring up in my direction but past me, vacantly. I stood over him and stared down. Pascal nudged me from behind.
“Take a picture.”
My gaze darted to Pascal, incredulous. “Take a picture!?” I whispered fiercely, questioningly. It was one thing to stare down at him, yet another to snap a photo on my iPhone as he gazed past me. It felt beyond strange to be looking at this man, sitting on the floor staring up past my head, and to take a picture of him without asking him or getting any kind of permission, but I did. I felt like I didn’t have a choice. Once that was done, we thanked the police, piled into the car, and started to drive back home to Chibuene. We made it halfway out of the station driveway (a distance of about 3 meters) before the chief policeman came racing towards us waving and shouting frantically.
Oh no, what now… I thought.
He ran up, out of breath, and motioned to Nelson to roll down the window. We all stared nervously out at him.
“Eh, please, can I have a ride to town?”
So, we put him and the other policeman into the back, with their AK-47s and batons in tow, and, finally, drove home.