a luta continua

Ilha de Mocambique is about two hours east of Nampula. My ride takes three and a half. The going rate remains about a dollar an hour. It's a bus not much bigger than a standard van, though at several points I count 38 people inside. I should have taken a minivan, which loads up and leave faster and stops less often. But how would I have seen so much of the countryside that way?

Nampula is one of the most densely populated parts of Mozambique, but you wouldn't know it looking out from the paved roads. In the distance are Yosemite-style rock faces that look like they'd be perfect for climbing. Otherwise, it's flat, dotted with old churches and new mosques. Nampula is another culture from the rest of Mozambqiue, about 50 percent Muslim. Boys and men at the bus station want their photo taken and are very persistent, goofing off, making faces, and taking off their shirts until a large crowd has grown in front of my lens. I realize I won’t have enough money to pay them all, as they expect, but so do they, and call it off.

Our driver wears a Nike hat and a t-shirt from Michael Jackson's Dangerous tour. At our first stop, about 200 meters down the road from the bus/rail station, we load an immense quantity of beer on top of the van. Suddenly there is a commotion and the crowd outside radiates out from a nucleus of attention. I have to stand up to see, but there is a thin, three-foot green snake slithering through the dust. The men take turns throwing rocks at it and whipping it with long sticks. "Cobra," they shout. Eventually it subdues. The driver slips a stick below its inert body and lifts it to show to the crowd. Behind him, kids walk out of the fields chewing sugar cane.

Sitting and waiting to begin again, I notice that the bus is crawling with inch-long roaches. They slither across the seats and the bare interior, disappearing into holes in the metal. The man who works the sliding door, packing people in and taking money, slaps the side of the bus twice -- whang whang -- and we are off again.

At our frequent stops in small towns we're greeted by the usual coterie of food vendors selling wet peanuts, eggs and sodas. I also see a boy selling fresh chicken wings, and shrimp fried with the head and shell on, and kids selling squashes, starfruit and melon. From big coolers men hawk plastic bags of water and milk, which buyers bite, suck and discard. There are empty plastic bags everywhere. At one stop a man boards carrying a small chicken in a wicket basket. Snot bubbles from the nose of the kid behind me, who stares fascinated at the bird. A man crawls up to the bus on four stumps and begs silently.

The bus seems to be in decent shape. On the downhills, when we get up a head of steam, the engine lets out a continual groan as if it has no choice about keeping up the pace, but isn't happy about it. Once we get close to the ocean, the driver seems to sense the salt air and speeds up, veering around other cars on tight curves.

When we get to the end of the land, we pile into an open-backed pickup that takes us across the one-lane bridge to Ilha. This two-kilometer island was the colonial capital until 1898 and a port whose European use dates back to the 15th century. It's now a UNESCO cultural heritage site and is home to the oldest European building in the southern hemisphere. The streets are narrow and empty. There are many rows of orderly trees and streets that threaten to close off, then open into green plazas. There are also many, many ruined buildings of unknown but decrepit age. The island has one ATM, one disco and one Internet cafe.