Angie and I unfortunately did not receive our temporary
residences (diris) so we had to leave the country on Wednesday to go apply for
new visas. We packed up our rental car
and headed out for an adventure. I
thought I was going to have to drive, but Chico (a staff that came with us)
found a friend that was willing to drive us for a free room and food. That was a pretty good deal to us so we took
it! As the trip went on, I became more and more thankful he was driving and not
me. This is because:
-
The trip that would normally take 3 hours at the
longest took 5 hours to get there and 6 and a half hours to get home.
-
Two extremely long stretches of road work on the
way there and the same 2 extremely long stretches of road work on the way back.
-
The South African border on the way there was
unusually crowded even though the Mozambican side was not.
-
On the South African border on the way there we
waited in the long visa line while the driver waited to get the stamp he needed
for the car. We got out of our long line
and he was still waiting in his line to get to the front and find out that he
had to wait in the visa line FIRST before he could get his car stamp. So he had to then wait through the long visa
line and then rewait in the long car stamp line. We just sat in the car :)
-
Pretty soon after making it through the border
we got stopped by police. They searched
the car and our bags and decided they were going to fine us because we didn’t
have a fire extinguisher. A FIRE
EXTINGUISHER! So they wanted 2,000
Rand. Chico said he didn’t have 2,000
Rand so they went down to 1,000. He said he didn’t have 1,000 so it continued
down until all we paid was 150 Rand (about $15) and were on our way.
-
While we were in Nelspruit, we were running
around doing things non-stop. It was not
really bad traffic, but a lot of driving in the city. It was super beneficial to just be able to
jump out of the car and let the guys go handle something else while we took
care of stuff.
-
On the way home, we got stopped by police AGAIN
(there were TONS of police out because it was right before a holiday
weekend). This time we got fined for our
break lights being out. So the guys went
through their bartering phase starting at 2,000 Rand again and settling in on 200
Rand (about $20). And this time our
driver said, if I give you 200 Rand then you give me that banana. And the police officer did! So we paid 200 Rand for a banana.
-
We had to wait in line to try to cross the border
for about 3 hours in the dark because the Easter holidays are a big deal over
here. All the Mozambicans were returning
home for the holidays.
-
We didn’t get home until 10:30PM Thursday night
so that means we had to go through the border on a very crowded busy night, had
to wait in road work at night without lights on the road like home, and there
would have been a lot of driving in the dark.
Overall, I’m sure you can see why I was very grateful my
first time driving was not on this particular trip. Don’t worry, my day will come! I’m hoping it will come on a less eventful
trip but that is doubtful because this is Africa and everything is eventful.
During the 39 and a half hours we were away from home we
accomplished a lot of things:
-
We applied for our visas at the Mozambican
embassy.
-
We went and picked up 11 boxes of donated goods
from a company (shirts, hats, cups, backpacks, binders, etc) from the Post
Office. We then had to unpack the boxes
on the street corner and stuff all this stuff into our tiny rental car to get
everything to fit. Then we went and
picked up giant plastic bags to put the stuff in to get it back to Mozambique
in. We unpacked the car into the plastic
bags in the parking lot of the hotel.
Then stored the plastic bags in our rooms while we went out the rest of
the day.
-
We went to the mall and bought bedding and other
things for the house and kids and ate dinner.
-
We went back to the hotel, took long HOT
showers, crashed onto real beds, and slept in nice air conditioned rooms.
-
Chico and his friend got up early the next
morning and took 3 of the plastic bags to be transported over the border by
chapa (public transport that you can pay a fee to ship your stuff across the
border so you don’t have to deal with finding a place to put it or worry about
getting it through the border).
-
Angie and I went and got pampered with a hair
wash, head massage, haircut, and style each.
Mine only cost about $18 USD!
-
We drove out to a warehouse and bought some
real, legit beds to send home.
-
Chico went with the beds to be shipped by chapa
with our last plastic bag of goods from the boxes we picked up earlier. While he was doing that, we went and bought
some toner for the printer and some other goodies at this giant place that was
just like Sam’s.
-
We picked up Chico at the chapa place and went
to try to pick up our visas. They were
not ready so we ran to the mall to get a few more things we needed for the
house.
-
We went and successfully picked up our
visas.
-
We headed to a special grocery store where Angie
can buy her Gluten free food (being Gluten free in Africa is not the easiest).
-
We picked up some McDonalds and headed
home.
-
We waited 3 hours to get to the South African side
of the border then were taken up to the place where people who are walking
through the border go get their passport stamped. We were told to follow the car in front of us,
turn around, and queue behind them. Then
we all stood together in a line and they herded us in to get our passport
stamped. The guy working there was
FREAKING OUT and said “WE ARE IMPROVISING PEOPLE!” It was brilliant and hilarious! Once we got into the border, we got through
the South African and Mozambican side pretty quickly.
-
I said after the border that I was glad we hadn’t
hit that second part of road work that had made us wait 45 minutes on the way
there. Literally as I was finished
saying that, we came to a stop and waited for 45 minutes at the road work. DOH…….I know better for next time.
These were just a few of our adventures while
traveling. The two days felt like a
week, and we were so tired when we got home. But we still had to unpack, get
all our stuff through the dark, muddy, watery road (because we’ve learned cars
can’t travel there or they get stuck), bring everything in and put it away, and
then get our beds set up that were waiting on us thankfully from a staff that
had picked up the stuff we had sent on the chapa. So we finally got in bed after midnight and
enjoyed our nice new beds! It was a
crazy trip, but we had so much favor along the way. We got everything we needed plus some. We got better deals than we expected, and we
got to send stuff via chapa so we didn’t have to worry about getting things
across the border. All of our stuff
arrived with no problems, and we were safe the whole time. It was a great trip! Even though we did a lot and it was exhausting,
I still felt rejuvenated afterwards. You
have no idea what a nice hot shower and an air conditioned room free of bugs
can do for your spirit. :)
 |
| My real new bed :) |
