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March 8, 2005
Hot and Sweaty, With More Hot and Sweaty in the Afternoon
To imagine the weather here, take the most humid day of the Washington DC summer and add a layer of grit and exhaust. That gets you close. The humidity and bright sunshine is a nice change from the brown winter of Washington.
Yesterday was my first full day in Mozambique. My luggage, however, has yet to spend a single minute here. I waited at the baggage carousel after getting off the plane, and waited and waited. No luck. An officer at the Lost and Found desk directed a group of us -- probably 10 percent of the flight -- halfway across the Maputo airport to another desk, from which emanated a long line. After about 20 minutes in this line with little sign of movement, the power went out. The light over the desk and its computer screen went dark. After a few minutes the line transplanted itself to a better-lit location, where after another wait I filled out a form and described my bags.
Since then I've had a series of phone calls to and from the airport, asking about my luggage. Call back in 10 minutes, I'm told. Or, we'll call you back in 10 minutes. Today I think I'll go out there and see for myself.
After reporting the luggage missing I discovered my hotel shuttle had either left without me or never arrived. Two boys helped me find a phone service in which one racks up phone time on a meter and then pays at a desk. I called the hotel and asked about the shuttle. Since I had no meticais, the boys paid and then asked for a little compensation. "15 dollars, 20, whatever," one said. I offered each a dollar. "We just paid 10,000 meticais," the other said. "That's already a dollar." I knew that it's more like 20,000 meticais to a dollar, but I laughingly handed over one more dollar. "One for each," the second boy said. So I forked over one more. This seemed like a good scam.
After I checked into the hotel, I wandered up to one of the main drags. Maputo seems to share an adolescent boy's obsession with pizza: there were several places in the first couple of blocks, including one called Domino's. I settled in at Mimmo's for a vegetarian pizza.
Posted by Adam Graham-Silverman at March 8, 2005 9:08 AM