Generosity in Moz

I’m writing from a place that could be nicknamed “The House of Fans”. 21 fans in a restaurant that might hold twice that many people…maybe. But it creates a nice breeze in the tropics of Mozambique, though it luckily cools off in these parts a bit in the evening. I’m waiting for a veggie pizza which will be a nice meal after a long, long day of photography for a group that’s promoting chicken farming as a way to improve their standard of living in the northern part of this country.

It’s been a very full 24 hours in Mozambique, and one that started with some amazing generosity. I arrived by plane in Nampula, the country’s third largest city but not huge by any means. Problem was that when I got to the airport, there was no money exchange office and the ATM would not take my card. As taxi drivers vied for my business, I tried to use my broken Portuguese to find out what it might cost to get there, and explain to them that I’d need to change money along the way. My Portuguese failed me, but luckily an airport officer took pity on me and made it his job to get me into the city. So he’s nice person number one.

He found a driver, Suleiman, who spoke English, and I told him where I wanted to go. He reported that the particular hotel was no longer in service, but that most of the hotels would change my money for me. So I picked another place, we hopped in his truck, and we were on our way. When we arrived at the hotel, they did have a room, but did not exchange money. So Suleiman said, “no worries, you can pay me tomorrow”, and thus became nice person number two.

But before Suleiman left, he had a conversation with the hotel manager to explain my plight, and got him to waive the pre-payment requirement. He said as long as I was staying for several days, I could pay later. Nice person number three.

Then I did find an ATM that gave me money (nice machine number one), but what I really needed to do was to make a phone call to the people I’d be working with and the mobile phone I had didn’t seem to be working. So I tried to talk to the guy on the street who sold cell phone minutes. He connected me to a bank guard who connected me to his boss, the bank manager, who ended up lending me his phone for me to make the important call. Nice person number four.

And in turn, nice #4 connected me to nice #5 when he learned that I needed to upgrade my cell service. Nice person number five, after a long day of work, offered to take me in his car to the place where they sell the SIM cards and minutes. Within five minutes, we were there, and my phone was back up and running again in no time. Calls were made and plans fell into place for the next couple of days.

But not to be outdone by all who had come before him was nice person number six. I had seen a pharmacy on my way to the cell phone store, and was in dire need of a decongestant since I had picked up a nasty runny nose and wanted to sleep well, but of course when I got back to the pharmacy, it had just closed. I stood outside the door, face like a sad puppy dog, as a few employees milled around inside. And once they saw how cute and cuddly I was (or perhaps how pathetically sad I was), one of them came to the door to ask me what I needed. He first tried to refer me to the list of other pharmacies that were open late that night—most were a bit far away—and then finally just said, “why don’t I just help you here”. So he took me back inside, spent about 10 minutes with me to figure out what would be the best medication, and then let me pay less than the cost when he couldn’t come up with the proper change. And this reminds me that I had promised to go back with the 50 Meticais to pay off my debt to this very generous man. I’ll do that right now.

I’d like to think that a string of generosity like this would happen in the States, but I highly doubt it. I guess that it could happen, as anything is possible in Land of Opportunity, but it seems a lot less likely than having a person of color or a woman elected as president. And it saddens me to know this. And sometimes I wonder why I’m OK about calling such a place home.