Tonight I lay in a bed in a semi-dumpy motel, it’s quite hot and muggy, almost nothing in the bathroom works, and I’m incredibly relieved to finally be here.
Eight or nine hours ago, I sat on the side of the road in the town of Alto Molocue and thought how perfectly content I was. I had just finished up a third day of work for TechnoServe, and it had all gone quite well. The weather outside was a perfect 85-90 degrees with a bit of wind. My view where I sat was gorgeous. This part of northern Mozambique looks like a very spread-out Yosemite—Half-Dome like granite chunks popping out of the earth as far as the eye can see—combined with the very lush tropics. And the people are friendly enough and not too friendly. To top it all off, just about everyone I’ve met here loves to be photographed—more so perhaps than anywhere I’ve been—and the offense is in NOT taking someone’s picture, as opposed to taking it. I had reached a real moment where I was feeling entirely content.
I was about to head west towards Malawi, the next stop on my trip, with no real timetable or fixed destination. It was 3 or 4PM and I was trying to hitch a ride to Mocuba, which I had been told was 2-3 hours away. And for the first couple hours of the trip, I continued to feel totally content. I had a good seat in the cab, the view was beautiful, the weather was great, and the driver and his girlfriend were just so demonstrably in love with one another that I started to envision what it might be like to lead the life of a trucker in the States. Life was good.
But then the road got bad, I got hungry, the trip took hours longer than expected, the seat I was in got less comfortable, the sweet nothings that lover was whispering to lover sounded liking whining, and so on. You get the picture
And I wondered where that deep sense of contentment had gone. How is it that that feeling of being content for me can be so fleeting? Fact is that I think I should be content now and for months to come. After all, I’ve had an incredibly smooth trip, I’ve been safe and healthy, I’ve been welcomed with open arms everywhere I go, I’m doing something that I love to do, and feel like I’m doing it well, I have friends who love me and support me, I’m learning new things and growing, etc. It seems that all of these are the essence of life, and this trip alone should provide an afterglow for months to come, even if my life somehow gets less exciting once I’m back in the States. But just as quickly as it had come, it was gone, and that was before the most powerful moment of the trip. Read on to the next post…
Life on the Edge
As I was looking for a ride westward after my last day of work in Mozambique and there seemed to be two semis that were leaving within a half hour of one another from Alto Molocue. The first one leaving was full--four people in the cab--so I caught the second one with a cast of characters. Besides being much longer and much more hellish than advertised (that is, after the first portion that was so delightful and beautiful), about two thirds of the way through the 7 hour trip, I was awoken by the driver's girlfriend telling me that we had come upon an accident. The first semi—the one that I had almost boarded—had rolled off the road down into a ravine and one of the passengers had been thrown from the cab and was wedged under the payload. I'm not sure that I knew right away that it was indeed this very truck—not that it should have mattered—and I went through a fascinating and disturbing string of thoughts and actions (or inactions) about the whole affair. I’m listing them in order as I can best remember:
• What a drag that we're stopping again.
• This is my big chance to save the day.
• I'm really hungry--I can finally get to my bag and dig out some food.
• I’m happy that for once I’m sitting and watching, and not trying to save the world.
• I'm moved that all these vehicles stopped and that everyone is concerned and helping.
• There are plenty of people helping--I'd just get in the way--and my lack of Portuguese would make me a liability.
• Did anyone check the cab of the truck? They must have, no? Would they have checked the cab for me? Why haven’t I checked?
• I should take a picture of this.
• And once they got the guy out from under the payload, I thought about putting my wilderness first-aid to use, but he SEEMED not nearly as bad off as I had expected so I did nothing.
• I did hear him say that he was one of four passengers in the truck. I didn't push the issue of where the other three were.
• I didn't suggest to the driver of my truck--who had been very central in the rescue efforts--that maybe we should take the guy to the hospital.
• And as we started to drive away, I thought "If that had been me, how would I have gotten my photographs to my clients?"
There’s really nothing that I can say in my own defense. Not sure if I was scared, selfish, lazy, uncaring, sage, in shock, respectful, detached, or a combination thereof, but I don’t want to act the same way again, and it makes me think that I need to have a clear mission statement for what I would do in a similar situation in the future. And I’ve been reflective since, wondering if this is a sign that everything having gone so well is now a thing of the past. I’ve thought about cutting my trip short, and being at home with the people I love. In any case, this is where my head is at…spinning a bit, to be sure.
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