We do more before 6am than all of our blog readers combined!

Sure it’s only because of the 7-hour time difference… but we don’t have to advertise that… we just do. Because we here at MovingToAFRICA.com (M2A) (yeah there’s only 2 of us, you gotta a problem with that?) pride ourselves on being brutally honest, slightly humorous and disgracefully tactless. Luckily our egos got lost in Jo-Burg… I mean here in Mozambique, we speak like children and act like infants. “Can we have a bed now?”

The producers of such poorly read entries as Let the blogging Begin, Our Taste Buds Take a Trip and How to Buy a Cell Phone in Maputo are now poised to lunch a new blockbuster blog-entry, entitled… Moving Up In Maputo.

C’mon Weezy, we’re moving on up… but the elevator ain’t workin.

How do you get things accomplished in Maputo? Well, first people have to see you and make sure you have both a face and a pulse. This is very important, because the telephone is unreliable in both aspects. We must have talked to this guy 5 times on the phone about getting a truck to help us move a few things from Chris’ house as well as to buy a few pieces of furniture from some vendors down the street. But all of our attempts were unsuccessful. So how did we do it, you may ask. We went there. We saw him. We said the same things we had said to him many times over the phone. (He speaks fluent English, mind you). And he stared at us. And then he said, “Ok, I’ll give you a truck for the day. And you can have a driver for the day too!”

And Bam- We were off. And luckily we brought our faces and pulses with us to the next place… so we also had great success there! You show up. They see you have a face and a pulse. They stare at you. And then you wait. (Often wondering what they are saying and why they are pointing and laughing). And then business can be conducted. It’s a lot like the “board-meetings” you all still have back in “the states”… except less boring and more gets done. They take about the same amount of time too. So after waiting with our faces and pulses in plain view for ten minutes we were granted yet another guide (Mathe) from another organization and trotted over to a giant warehouse to pick up a bed! (By trot I mean speed crazily in a vehicle that is as noisy as it is unsafe. And by bed I mean, YES, a real bed with box spring and a real mattress). We were also fortunate to discover the warehouse had a TV, a mirror and some bedposts that stick into the bed-frame that no one could locate… Hey it’s Africa… I think it was here a certain lesser-known rock-group wrote that song… “You can’t always get what you want…”

Anyway, the warehouse was enormous! What was it filled with? Well even though it still had oodles of room to spare… it did contain tons and tons of condoms!! They were in giant sacks. Large brown unlabeled burlap sacks. Sacks so large, piled so high, you would imagine (at least, I imagined) that they contained enough peanuts to feed a zoo full of elephants. Except they didn’t contain peanuts. Like we said, they were big-ass sacks of condoms as far as the eye could see. Those sacks, a bed, a tv, a mirror and some posts. But no frame. Oh, and some more condoms. Did I mention there were a lot of condoms?

So, after much crawling around on the precariously elevated platforms (they couldn’t have put the bed on the floor of the warehouse, that was for condoms only) and after much squishing of giant American mattresses into a tiny foreign made truck, and many many phone calls to people that spoke both English and Portuguese… we were again speeding our way back to our new apartment (that we have yet to spend any time in… due to it being completely void of all things).

Quick pause for station identification: Driving in Maputo is like playing Vice City Miami. (You know, the video-game Wal-Mart is trying to ban). The bigger vehicle rules the day. That’s the only rule. Pedestrians are the real losers here because they have no vehicle at all… and if you are caught in a crosswalk when the light turns green (any light, any where) you best throw whatever it is you have balanced on your head and JUMP FOR YOUR LIFE! At least that’s how our driver played his hand while behind the wheel… because by my count he had the highest score. He nearly took out several pedestrians, a few bicyclists, and some smaller Japanese cars that really had no business being imported... Oh and Shappas… Shappas are mini-vans that pretend to be busses. They are packed with more people than a sardine can is fish… and although they have the size and girth to command respect on the road, they also make frequent stops, and therefore conversely they get the least amount of respect. Not to mention, that pedestrians (remember, they are the real losers in this game) are continually entering and exiting the Shappas, so other drivers just hate them and taunt them to pass… but never let them do so. I guess that just adds to the complexity of the fun that is driving in this city.

Where was I? Oh yeah, moving in. So there we were, in front of our apartment building. Jamy, myself, Luis (the non-friendly driver) and Mathe (the very friendly NGO employee). And guess what, they felt obligated to help us carry all this stuff in. I didn’t feel bad for Luis (pronounced: Lu-eesh) because he had been a real sourpuss all day and in fact tried to get rid of us several times so he could go to the airport and pick up the mail-pouch. But I did feel bad for Mathe (pronounced: Matt) because he’s just a normal guy working in an office and was NOT dressed for the task he was about to undertake… or “up-take” as it turns out in this case.

So the real difficulty of moving in Maputo, is that you not only have to carry things, you have to hope they fit in the elevator, hope the elevator is working and also hope that no one takes your truck (or anything from it) while you aren’t there to stare at it. (That’s how security works here… you pay people to stare at the thing you want “secured.” Apparently that’s the unspoken rule of theft: If someone is staring at it, it’s off limits. That’s just how it works here… and so far so good). Have you ever heard of any other culture in the world based on “secure staring”? If I ever write that Kurt Vonnegut-like book I keep talking about writing, it’s going to have a lot to do with "staring" vs’ “secure-staring”. It’s such a great concept! It’s like the honor code without the code-part.

So, here is the complex plan of how we moved in: Luis hands me stuff and stares at the car, I carry it into the lobby and leave it with Jamy so she can stare at it and Mathe helps me carry. Mind you, I’m dressed to move large, heavy and very dirty objects. Poor Mathe, is dressed to be at his office behind a desk using a computer. The more I get to know him the more I like him and the more I feel sorry that he got assigned to help the Americans go to the warehouse.

So, it’s my last trip to the truck and when I get there I have a little panic attack, because I’m startled to find that Luis has moved the vehicle around the corner and out of the way of traffic... So when I walk over to its new location I find it completely empty! This is a surprise to me. So I say to Luis in my very best Italio-Guese, “Onde l’outro cama?” (Where’s the other mattress?) To which his bewildering, but not out of character reply, falls flat against my ears, “Non So.” Roughly translated this means, “Dunno”. As I turn and sprint back to the building (with my eyes peeled for a giant mattress walking itself down the street), I hear that same sourpuss mumble something about wanting to get back in time for lunch… I leave him there, mumbling something of my own about him being a flying-jackass.

The guy who is paid to stare at the door in the lobby, “Senior Seguiranza” sees the panic in my eyes and explains to me very calmly that the box-spring-mattress was too large for the elevator and so it was discarded. Oh, that makes sense… but instead of giving up I follow in the direction he is pointing. And to my utter lack of understanding I find THE STAIRS! Discarded… “Discarde” is Portuguese for STAIRS!!! Ahh… I have much time to ponder this new word and commit it to memory as I run up the fourteen flights to be some at least some help to our friend Mathe. Ok, so I ran to the seventh floor… walked quickly to the ninth, took a little break at eleven and finally saw the box spring resting comfortably in front of my new apartment door on the 14th floor. There was no Mathe anywhere to be found. Apparently he had beaten me up the stairs so badly (with a box spring mattress mind you) that he had time to take the elevator back down find Jamy and wonder where I was.

Long story short (who am I kidding? Long story longer): Mathe is our new friend. Luis is our new enemy. And Dan & Jamy are yet again the fools of Maputo. Fore Mathe had enlisted the help of a local vendor to carry the mattress up with him. Why he didn’t just wait for me, I don’t know. But he did us a huge favor and I wasted it by running up the stairs like a mad-man. And again made an even bigger fool of myself when I tried to tip the vendor-kid with roughly five-dollars. Mathe waited till he left and then informed me that was way too much and that I should have instead given him the equivalent of a nickel. Great! I just made my new-found friend scold me in the ways of tipping. (I mean, I have been here for 2 weeks now… and I did climb those 14 freakin floors, it was rough by the way, can't wait for one of those infamous power outages) and I personally thought the deed was worth 5 bucks!!! But instead, Mathe said I was giving the (typical American) impression that I had “money to burn” and that it wasn’t such a good thing to broadcast in Maputo on your first day of moving into your new apartment.

Sorry, I am truly sorry, but the story doesn’t really end there… a part of it ends ends with Jamy and I offering to take Mathe out for dinner, as he is super nice, works at an NGO where everyone else seems to have a certain distaste for us AND he offered to teach us (much needed) Portuguese in return for the favor of us teaching him English. But then the sotry starts to coninue on with Mathe and the driver retelling the story of me running around crazed like a chicken while Mathe and some kid hoofed the mattress up 14 flights of stairs… Little did they know, I know enough Italio-Guese to know when someone is speaking ill of me… That and that whole pointing and laughing thing is a dead-giveaway.

Ok, so there really is no end to this story. Mathe left us to go back to work. I would have taken the afternoon off if I were him… but UTA doesn’t have an office here in Maputo.., and his NGO is really a bunch of slave-drivers anyway (they obviously have tons of condoms to… do whatever it is they do with them here). Luis, however insisted on going back to his office so he could pick up his pay-check… We said ok, but we didn’t let him go that easy. It was only 1pm and if we couldn’t eat lunch, neither could he. (Jamy and I hadn’t even had breakfast!) So, luckily we were able to keep him under contract… by staring at him… (if you haven’t caught on yet, staring is very powerful here, I tell ya!) until he relented to drive us over the coast so we could buy whicker furniture from the locals who sit there weaving it together day after day. This really is an entirely separate story, worth its own post… but to be honest, I’m sick of writing to you all, so I’m just gonna gloss over it real quick here and now. Ready?

Here goes. In hindsight, I think we unintentionally got even with Luis for the day. Because the only way we knew to get him to take us to the place where the whicker furniture was sold (he had given up on our ability to communicate like adults a long time ago) was to tell him to take us to a Restaurant called Costa Del Sol. Why? Because that restaurant is very near the spot where they sell furniture by the Ocean. Luis, I don’t think had any idea of what we were intending to do. And if he did have a clue, it was probably something way more normal, like maybe going to go eat lunch… and maybe even invite him to eat with us. Sorry, but no, eating was not an option. We were there to buy really cheap furniture at very high prices.

So after another phone call to a person who could speak both our languages, Luis took us to the place. That’s when I gave Jamy a heart-attack. Not on purpose though… We get there, we get out of the truck and as we begin to peruse the many hand-crafted goods scattered about outside; immediately all the craftsmen (about 20 of them) come rushing over to us. And because we can’t really speak with them, I reach into my pocket for the pen and paper I had brought to write down prices and haggle with numbers. Numbers are numbers, right? I mean if I say, twenty… they might think I said two-hundred. But if I write 20. Then they will see it as 20. Jamy, however thinks I am reaching into my pocket in order to pull out the hundreds of Metts wadded up in there and freaks out. But once she sees I have a pen… she begins to catch on and eventually marvels at my ingenuity. That happens here a lot between the two of us: I do something, she freaks-out and then eventually marvels at it. It’s quite cute actually, especially that now we have the whole thing down pat: Do-Freak-Marvel.

One living room-set, and one dinning room-set later, we are all comfortably seated on our new furniture by the side of the road, looking at the ocean and bartering over prices via pen and paper. Now, you have to understand that we are scribbling records of millions and millions Metts in nicely rounded numbers… 2.4 for this and 1.8 for that, and the pen and paper is soooo freakin helpful! Now I’m marveling. Then we get close to a price we can all agree on when I go over board… I start to talk discounts… and that leads to me writing out percentages of discounts next to the prices we are working towards. Jamy chuckles and so all the craftsmen start to laugh too. I’m used to it though. Remember how pointing and laughing are just part of doing business here? Well, it worked. We got the discounts. Perhaps not as big as some people might, who actually KNOW HOW TO SPEAK THE LANGUAGE… but at least we didn’t get ripped off. We bought two rooms worth of quality (sand-filled) whicker furniture (that smells just like the beach from where it was made) and custom ordered a third room’s worth to be picked up next week.

And that my friends is how to get things done, African-style.

P.S. I filmed a quick little movie of our empty apartment and hope to air it within the next few days. As for moving in? Maybe next Wednesday when we pick of the rest of the stuff…?