Valentine’s in Mozambique: Heat, border drama and unrest

The Bad Green-Eyed Woman from Paris decided to join me in Durban. It was 2^oC in the 11th arrondissement and 31^oC on my veranda.

The monkeys lay sprawled on the tiles, expecting me to come to them with bananas. Nobody in their right mind wants to be in Durban in February.

I was only there to regroup after my finances took a savaging during several months in Europe and Costa Rica.

She wanted to get out of the City of Light right away and I didn’t ask for reasons why.

Women who live in Paris are unpredictable and often dangerous. It’s why I liked her. But still. Durban in February? I don’t even have air-con, just a couple of battered old fans that mutant mozzies use as a tailwind to repeatedly stab their repulsive snouts into my sweat-soaked face.

I tried warning her but she was having none of it, simply giving me a time and day to fetch her from King Shaka “International” Airport and a veiled threat that terrible things would happen if I was late.

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She sashayed out of the terminal and immediately began sweating like a pig on a spit braai.

Apparently it was my fault. I tried to impress her with the statue of King Shaka that is inexplicably facing away from the exit and partially hidden behind a tree.

Two bronze cows stood nearby. “Cows,” I said, pointing at them, because nobody in South Africa can pass cows without saying “cows”. She looked at me as if I had sustained brain damage in the weeks we’d been apart.

Let me skip ahead.

I thought it might be fun to take her to a neighbouring country for a few days, but also to avoid the fallout of her insisting on sunbathing topless at the complex’s communal pool.

“How about Mozambique?” I said over a late breakfast.

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She shrugged and popped another piece of crayfish into her pretty Anglo-Gallic potty-mouth. After discovering the exchange rate, she thinks it would be criminal not to eat crayfish at every meal.

I’d been through the Kosi Bay border before and it was mayhem. Took at least three hours to pay the bribes and fight my way through an armada of bakkies jammed with heavy-set families anxious to get down to Ponta do Ouro to start killing fish and guzzling gallons of R&R.

Rum and raspberry is the drink of choice among holidaymakers in these parts. It has four stages – happy, violent, blind and, finally, insane.

This time, I rolled up in my weathered Subaru Forester to a very different scenario. Mine was the only car. On a Friday? I was delighted. I explained to the Bad Green-Eyed Woman that this was an extraordinary piece of luck.

She said the luck might not last if she didn’t get a glass of Sauvignon Blanc with an ice block in it.

I said borders in Africa rarely served alcohol and suggested she wait in the car while I tried to find someone in charge. She wondered if perhaps the Rapture had happened. It was a refrain I was to hear more than once.

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A burly Mozambican official in a blue uniform with stars on his epaulettes sauntered up and asked where we were going. It seemed pretty obvious since the car was pointed towards Maputo. He smiled and told me to follow him for what I presumed was the usual shakedown.

Instead, he guided me into a prefab just big enough to accommodate a desk and a surly woman who stamped us out of South Africa.

We were then shepherded into a prefab on the Moz side where we were stamped in and the foreigner was charged R250. I was then ushered to another prefab for my car’s temporary import permit which didn’t cost me a cent. No bribes? No other visitors? Through the border in under 10 minutes? Any normal person might’ve been suspicious.

The sandy track that once hugged the border fence down to the coast has been replaced by a tarred road that runs towards the capital for a few kilometres, then you double back on the tarred road to Ponta.

I had been looking forward to impressing the sidekick with my knowledge of offroad driving by letting air out of my tyres, but she didn’t seem to care either way. You’ll get your wine soon enough, I said.

We spent three nights in a “luxury” tent on the outskirts of Ponta, a party town which was weirdly quiet. Another Rapture remark. Yes, of course I’d heard there was trouble after Frelimo reportedly rigged the October elections.

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But the protests were in Maputo and further north. Ponta was safe. That’s what I told the Parisian, anyway. Trust me, I said. I’m a journalist. I know things.

On Sunday we packed up and headed for the border, full of R&R, cheap prawns and good cheer. We hadn’t gone far when I noticed smouldering logs on the side of the road. Two minutes later, a group of singing, cavorting youngsters dragging branches across the road.

The sidekick thought it was some kind of festival and wanted to get out and dance with them.

I advised against it, suggesting that we return to Ponta for more drinks while the kids had their fun. She raised an eyebrow.

“You brought me to a war zone on Valentine’s Day?” I told her to relax, which might have been my second mistake. We’re now in a reed “chalet” and so hot that we don’t even have the energy to swat the squadrons of anopheles mosquitoes that are attacking us in waves. I’ve hidden the notice in the room that mentions flying bush cockroaches.

This is going to cost me heavily in wine.

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